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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

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UNITED STATES Of"^E^I€A. 
























































































































READING AND THE MIND 


WITH SOMETHING TO READ 


(Tenth Thousand) 


BY 

Rev. ]. F. X. O’CONOR, S. J. 

M , 

PROFESSOR OF MENTAL PH I I.OSOPH Y, ST. FRANCIS XAVIER S COLLEGE, NEW YORK ; 
AUTHOR OF “CUNEIFORM INSCRIPTION OF NEBUCHADNEZZAR 
CYLINDER J ’ “LIFE OF ST. ALOYSIUS,” ETC. 


REVISED FIFTH EDITION 


BENZIGER BROTHERS 

New York, St. Louis and Cincinnati 

1893 


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!T a e*Cr 



^OFCOAV; 

JUL 8 1893 

WAS f 

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1 * 5 ^ 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1893, by 
Rev, J. F. X. O’CONOR, S. J. 


in the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D, C 


Press of J. J. Little & Co. 
Astor Place, New York 


PREFACE. 


'jPHE kind welcome extended to this book by 
all classes of readers is a proof that it goes 
horns'to the human heart. The work is substan¬ 
tially a list of the English authors, an acquaintance 
with whom is imperatively demanded in those 
readers who would aspire to the title of English 
scholars. Under well-selected heads are given the 
names which have illustrated in prose or in verse 
the great tongue which is fast gaining supremacy 
among the languages of the world ; and if golden 
leisure hours but come to one in moderate store, 
he can fill them up with treasures drawn from the 
sources which this little book will indicate, at 
the same time running no risk of wasting time in 
gathering dross or garnering poison. Often are 


4 


Preface. 


teachers, parents, and friends asked by those who 
take guidance from them, “ What shall I read?” 

This work will answer the question, an impor¬ 
tant one, as all know, for, to quote a line from 
the pages before us: “It is nearly an axiom that 
people will not be better than the’books they 
read.” 

Though it would be far too much to presume 
that all herein outlined has been accomplished, yet 
to do so was indeed the aim and ardent wish of 
the writer. Should this book induce one young 
mind to undertake a profitable course of reading, 
its work will have been done. 


LETTER FROM CARDINAL NEWMAN 
TO THE AUTHOR. 

October 3. 1884. 

The Rev. Fr. J. F. X. O’Conor, S. J. 

Dear Rev. Father: I thank you cordially for 
your letter and your pamphlet. It is of course 
very pleasant to receive such testimony in my 
favor from one who is so far removed from me 
as to be able to claim impartiality. And I have 
that great opinion and respect for the Society of 
Jesus, that the good word of a member of it is 
most acceptable to me. 

Our respective countries so differ from each 
other that what I am going to say is, perhaps, 
out of place; but in England I should have some 
misgiving lest the generous praise you bestow on 


6 Letter from Cardinal Newman to the Author. 

what I have written should lead in some quarters 
of the literary world to a reaction against it. In 
my past life I have found that some of my best 
benefactors were those who abused me, and by 
abusing raised a feeling in my favor; while those 
who spoke out boldly their liking for what I was 
saying or doing raised a contrary feeling which 
was adverse to me. I should not be surprised 
to be told that this is not the case of America, 
but I have thought it worth while to mention 
it to you. 

Excuse my stiff writing, which is the trouble 
of old age. 

Begging your good prayers for a very old man, 
I am, 

Your faithful servant, 

John H. Card. Newman. 






CONTENTS. 


READING AND THE MIND : 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Difficulty of a Choice. n 

II. Influence of Greek Thought. 15 

III. Influence of Writers over Readers. 26 

IV. False Principles in Reading. 31 

V. Masters in Prose—Newman and Ruskin. 40 

VI. The Completeness of Newman. 46 

VII. Suggestiveness of Ruskin. 51 

VIII. Poetry as a Literary Study. 58 

TX. Wordsworth and Nature. 63 

X. Tennyson and Art. 73 

XI. Longfellow and the Soul. 88 

XII. Bryant and American Scenes. 95 

XIII. Miscellaneous Reading. 97 

XIV. Lyric Poetry. ... 107 

XV. Dramatic Poetry. 115 

XVI. Dialogue and Soliloquy of Poetry. 128 

XVII. Humor in Tragedy. 135 

XVIII. How to Write a Tragedy. 141 

SOMETHING TO READ: 

Part I.—Literature of Time . 151 

Reflective and Critical. 153 

Studies for Prose Style. 155 

Eloquence. 1 55 
























8 


Contents. 


PAGE 

Translations. 156 

Studies for Taste in Poetry. 156 

Versification. 157 

Collections of Favorite Poems. 157 

Biography. 159 

Poetry. 162 

Didactic or Reference. 164 

History. 166 

Fiction. 167 

Miscellaneous. 168 

Hints to make Reading Fruitful. 170 

Graded Class Readings. 173 

Part II.—Literature of Eternity. 181 

Devotional. 182 

Biographical. 184 

Historical. 186 

Controversial—Instructive. 188 

Miscellaneous. 190 

The Imitation of Christ . 191 

The New Testament. 192 






















READING AND THE MIND. 
































































































































READING AND THE MIND. 


CHAPTER I. 

DIFFICULTY OF A CHOICE. 

^TfHAT shall I read? Round about me lies a 
world of reading, but I do not know where 
to begin. I feel that I must choose wisely, for 
time is so short that moments spent on ill-chosen 
books are threads cut f^om the web of a useful 
life. 

H ow, then, shall I choose ? What are the books 
that will teach me to think nobly and to write 
well ? 

I long for a guide to lead me through a short 
but useful course of literary reading which, in my 
young days, may so form my taste that in later 


12 


Reading and the Mind . 


life there may lie stored up for me the joy of a 
cultivated mind. 

Not few are those who must look back with re¬ 
gret to hours that could have been freighted with 
learning, but no one was near to answer for them 
these questions. And the hours went by and the 
men grew with the years, but the time of the 
golden harvest was gone and the grain of those 
years must remain forever uncut. 

To answer just such a yearning this little book 
was written, and is now dedicated to the young, 
strong intellects of our land, that in their fresh 
vigor need but to know the good and the right in 
order to love it and make it their own. 

We must choose those books which will teach 
us the right in principle and the good in taste. 

There is much reading done in our day, and yet 
the topics treated are those which demand a sound 
judgment to discern the false from the true. Many 
recent writers have a graceful style without right 
principles, and, moreover, they lack, as Cardinal 


Difficulty of a Choice . 


13 


Newman observes, “that individuality, that ear¬ 
nestness, most personal and yet most unconscious 
of self, which is the greatest charm of an author.”* 
Under cover of beautiful language they spread 
abroad before the reading world the theories of 
their warped fancies, whether of history, religion 
or philosophy. 

We find these theories embodied in romances, 
essays and poems, and with such masterly skill are 
they interwoven that one must needs pause, if he 
would not be led by a persuasive writer to view 
as plausible, opinions which, though startling and 
attractive, are utterly false. We must find a guide 
in this wilderness of thought—if it be but a thread 
—and while dwelling briefly on the necessity of 
reading, and of reading literature properly so 
called, it is important to lay still greater stress 
on the necessity of having one who will be, as it 
were, a friend among the authors we take for con¬ 
stant perusal. If we form our minds to truth and 
* Newman. Idea of a University, p. 229. 


14 


Reading and the Mind. 


literary taste upon real masters we shall then be 
able to derive principles which will help us to 
direct for ourselves all the rest of our reading. 
But here precisely lies the difficulty. Who are 
those who will guide our thoughts aright? 

Before referring to the authors of our time, it 
will be profitable to consider how a nation or cen¬ 
tury may stamp a character on succeeding ages; 
how an author may influence his readers, and how 
the false principles of a writer may bear their fruit 
in the minds of those who live after him, while the 
good “ may be interred with his bones.” 

Who, then, have educated the mind of man in 
the past? Who are the writers that have built up 
literature? Who, to-day, are the real sustainers of 
thought ? 


CHAPTER II. 


INFLUENCE OF GREEK THOUGHT. 

HERE is a fact of history which stands before 



us firm and solid, and, however much we 
may be so inclined, we cannot thrust it aside. It 
is the influence of the literature of earlier nations 
upon our own. 

The people which had the most prominent part 
in this work was the nation of the Greeks, to 
whom, we are told by eminent minds, the educa¬ 
tion of the intellect of man * was intrusted by 
Divine Providence, so that, when the time should 
come for the spiritual training of his soul, the less 
noble work of intellectual advancement would not 
interfere with the Divine teaching. 

What a nation the Greeks were in intellectual 
♦Gladstone. Primer of Homer, p. 140. Jebb, Greek Lit. 


16 Reading and the Mind. 

grandeur, and what a language was theirs! “The 
world,” says Cardinal Newman,* “ was to have 
certain intellectual teachers, and no others; Homer 
and Aristotle, with the poets and philosophers who 
circle round them, were to be the schoolmasters of 
all generations,” and “Homer was invested with 
the office of forming the young mind of Greece to 
noble thoughts and bold deeds.” But his work 
did not cease with those young minds. His words 
lived when the Grecian heroes who had learned 
them lay stretched silent on the battle plain, or 
when their ashes were mingled with those of the 
funeral pyre on which they were burned. 

“The Greek language,” writes Mrs. Browning, f 
“was a strong intellectual life, stronger than any 
similar one which has lived in the breath of articu¬ 
lately speaking man and survived it. No other 
language has lived so long and died so hard, pang 
by pang—yielding reluctantly to that doom of 

* Newman. Idea of a University. Classical Lit. 

t Mrs. Browning. Essays on the Greek Poets, p. ir. 


Influence of Greek Thought. ly 

death and silence which must come at last to the 
speaker and the speech. 

“ Wonderful it is to look back fathoms down 
the great past! thousands of years away—where 
whole generations lie unmade to dust—where the 
sounding of their trumpets and the rushing of 
their scythed chariots and the great shout which 
brought down the birds stone-dead from beside 
the sun, are more silent than the dog breathing 
at our feet, or the fly’s paces on our window pane; 
and yet from the heart of that silence we feel 
words that rise up like smoke—words of men, 
even words of women, uttered at first, perhaps, 
in ‘ excellent low voices,’ but audible and distinct 
even to our times. * * * It is wonderful to 

look back and listen ! ” 

And to-day the voice of Homer in his great 
epic, the Iliad, is still heard. His tones, with that 
enduring vitality of his nation, rise, clear and 
strong, above the hush of the past. 

And as we go down the hill of ages, the ALneid 


18 Reading and the Mind. 

of Virgil seems but a woodland that sends us back 
the echo of the Iliad reversed, the first part of 
Virgil’s work containing the last part of Homer’s, 
and the beginning of the Iliad supplying the close 
of the Hineid. 

Thus Greek thought moulded the Latin mind, 
but the onward march of Homer’s intellect is not 
yet brought to a halt. The inspiration of the 
great Catholic Dante was drawn from Virgil, whom 
in person Dante took as his guide through the 
wild gloom of the Inferno. From all three, Homer, 
Virgil and Dante, Milton gathered materials for 
his Paradise Lost, and thus we see how one of the 
great stones in the pyramid of English thought 
comes indirectly from a Grecian source. 

In a similar way we may trace the course of the 
lyric poem from Pindar down through Horace to 
the lyrics and melodies of Gray, Keats, Shelley 
and Moore. 

If, as an observant writer has said, “the first 
inventors of any art are among the greatest bene- 


Influence of Greek Thought. 19 

factors of their race,” how great is our indebted¬ 
ness in literature to the Greeks, and especially to 
Homer. “ The bold step which they take from 
the unknown to the known, from blank ignorance 
to discovery, is equal to many steps of subsequent 
progress.” * 

“The commencement,” says Aristotle, “ is more 
than half the whole.” This is a sound judgment, 
and it will be well that we should bear it in mind 
during the glance we are about to take at the 
language and literature of the Greeks, and at their 
value and influence in relation to the literature 
which followed. “ The child is father of the man,” 
both in the individual and the species; and the 
human race at the present day lies under infinite 
obligations to the genius and industry of early 
ages. 

The influence of the Greek mind on modern 
thought is everywhere felt and is growing more 
and more visible. But, as in Greek thought there 

’ * Rawlinson. Ancient Monarchies. Vol. I. p. 60. 

2 


20 


Reading and the Mind. 


was the higher and the lower element, so have we 
in our day some writers who cull from it what 
was noble and others who gather what was base. 
These latter, taking what their depraved tenden¬ 
cies have urged, them to seek and coloring it with 
a degraded pencil, pass it upon the world as the 
ideal of Greek thought and Greek art. 

The ideals of the Greeks, even in their ignorance 
of things supernal, in their passion, and with the 
distorted remnants of truth to which they clung, 
were lofty. We have but to think of Homer, 
Sophocles and Plato to be convinced of this. 

All that has been called Greek thought, however, 
is not such. Two streams come from the same 
source, but their current is not the same. If we 
look upon the map of Turkey in Asia, we shall 
see that the melted snows on the summit of the 
mountain range near Mount Ararat supply the 
waters of those two mighty streams, the Tigris and 
the Euphrates. But how different the course 
of the two rivers ! The Tigris, as travellers tell 


Influence of Greek Thought. 


21 


us,* flows almost directly south in a clear, deep 
stream, while the Euphrates takes a northern, 
western and, finally, southern course, but in a 
shallow, zigzag bed, frequently bursting its banks 
and bringing ruin to life and property by its 
destructive floods. 

Such are the two lines of Greek thought, both 
come from the snowy regions of the past; one 
keeps its pure refinement, the other is sullied by 
its own extravagance. In Homer we find the 
thought yet unsullied by modern dregs, though 
pagan in its morality; but when we come to such 
men as Swinburne, Rossetti and their nameless 
school, it is the Greek sensualist that appears and 
not the noble type of Homer, or of Sophocles in 
his Philoctetes or Antigone. 

What a picture Homer has drawn for us of 
pure family affection and unswerving adherence to 
duty. At the gates of the city, before the battle, 
stood Hector and Andromache. She speaks: 

* Rawlinson. Ancient Monarchies. Vol. I. p. 6. 


22 


Reading and the Mind . 


“ Hector, thou art father and dear mother to me, 
and brother and my youthful spouse besides.'* In 
pity, keep within the fortress here, nor make thy 
child an orphan, nor thy wife a widow. A happier 
lot were mine, if I must lose thee, to go down to 
earth, for I shall have no hope when thou art 
gone—nothing but sorrow.” But Hector, “great 
in war,” answered : “ I should stand ashamed be¬ 
fore the men and long-robed dames of Troy were I 
to keep aloof and shun the conflict coward-like. 
Not thus my heart prompts me, for greatly have I 
learned to dare and strike among the foremost 
sons of Troy, upholding my great father’s name 
and mine.” Then taking his infant son, who 
shrank from the nodding plume of his helmet, he 
prayed: “O Jupiter and all ye deities, vouchsafe 
that this my son may yet become among the 
Trojans eminent like me, and nobly rule in Ilium. 
May they say this man is greater than his father 
was.” 

* Homer. Bryant’s Translation. Book VI. 1 . 551. 


Influence of Greek Thought. 23 

What in literature could be more beautiful than 
this simple picture ? What more touching than 
the sisterly affection and self-sacrifice of the sad 
Antigone of Sophocles ? 

When Polynices, her brother, was killed, she 
buried him with her own hand, and for this act of 
a sister’s love was entombed alive. In reply to the 
king who asked how she dared disobey his laws, 
she said: “ Neither the gods nor justice established 
such laws, and not through fear of any man would 
I violate the laws of the immortals. I know I 
must die—and why not ?—even though you had 
not proclaimed it; and if I die before my day I 
count it gain. For one who lives, like me, in 
sorrow, is it not a gain to die ? The sorrow of such 
a fate is nothing; but had I suffered him who was 
born of my mother to lie in death an unburied 
corpse, then should I have grieved, but for this 
my doom I do not grieve.” * 

This noble spirit of Antigone—her sublime rev- 

* Sophocles. Antigone. 


24 


Reading and the Mind. 


erence for principle and for the laws of the gods 
above the laws of men—is it not worthy of its 
place in the records of nations as, apart from the 
deeds of saints, one of the highest examples of 
womanly heroism ? 

Such writers as Homer and Sophocles were the 
educators of the Greek mind, and their thoughts 
have helped to mould the noble minds of later 
days. To such men as these, and “ to the poets of 
all time,” to Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, 
our minds must turn if we would form our taste 
and judgment. 

Do not say, “Of what use to dwell on these? 
To some at least among us they are out of reach.” 
Not altogether so. Our American poet, William 
Cullen Bryant, has brought to us the treasures 
of Homer’s Greek thought, wrapped in the rich¬ 
ness of elegant English verse. The Sophocles of 
Plumptre, the Virgil of Conington and the Dante 
of Longfellow open up a still broader view of the 
classic past to many who else may find themselves 


Influence of Greek Thought. 25 

shut out from all thought but that of our English 
writers. 

Four of the “grand old masters,” Homer, Soph¬ 
ocles, Virgil and Dante, translated by Bryant, 
Plumptre, Conington and Longfellow, are spread 
before our eyes. Their thoughts are ours if we 
will make them ours. These four, though but rays 
of light from the past, would be a life study, a 
profitable and a noble one. 

But coming down to our own times and to 
English writers, we find ourselves obliged to pass 
by, with reluctance, Germany with her Niebe- 
lungen Lied, her Klopstock and her Schiller; 
France with her Bossuet, Corneille, Racine, Mon- 
talembert, F£nelon, De Maistre; Spain with her 
Calderon de la Barca, Lope de Vega and Cervantes, 
and must perforce, for the present, shut out from 
our view these magnificent fields, that we may 
find time to explore, however imperfectly, the 
regions that are nearer to us in time, space and 
language. 


CHAPTER III. 


INFLUENCE OF WRITERS OVER READERS. 

HE field of English reading is so vast and 



broad that it is hopeless, within our limited 
space, to do more than suggest a very few authors. 
Even in these few we must be defective. No 
human writer has evpr yet combined a faultless 
style with thoughts that are blameless in truth, 
philosophy and faith. We do not hope for the 
coming of such a writer. Our aim, then, will be 
to choose those who, all things considered, as 
literary teachers are least open to objection. 

In the beginning it was stated that there is 
necessity of a prudent choice in the authors we 
take as our guides. Why so ? The reason is be¬ 
cause English literature is not Catholic ; and yet, 
if Catholics ought to hold, as they should and will 



Influence of Writers over Readers . 27 

hold, a high literary position, English literature 
must be familiar to them. 

“Certain masters of composition,” Newman tells 
us,* “as Shakespeare, Milton and Pope, the writers 
of the Protestant Bible and Prayer Book, Hooker 
and Addison, Swift and Goldsmith, have been the 
making of the English language; and as that 
language is a fact, so is the literature a fact by 
which it is formed and in which it lives. * * * 

Whether we will or no, the phraseology and 
diction of Shakespeare, of Milton, of Pope, of 
Johnson’s ‘Table Talk,’ and of Walter Scott have 
become a portion of the vernacular tongue.” 

Even if English literature may have been Prot¬ 
estant, there still remains for Catholics, as Cardinal 
Newman once more reminds us, “ the duty of 
cultivating English literature.” 

Would it be untrue or unkind to say that 
Catholics have not attended to literature as much 
as they should? If this neglect comes from a 
* Newman. University Lectures. 


28 


Reading and the Mind. 


care of the more necessary, the more important 
and higher duties of life,-there is no blame to 
be attached, but rather the highest praise is due 
to those who have so true an idea of their ob¬ 
ligations. But is not real literature oftentimes 
spurned for trash ? 

Time that could be employed in enriching a 
bright intellect is spent in wasting its energies. 
The most sensational and useless authors, from 
the writers of dime novels to Wilkie Collins 
and Charles Reade, will be devoured, but mean¬ 
time the great masters of English thought will 
be ignored and even their very names be un¬ 
known. 

“ Cardinal Newman,” says a recent writer in the 
American Catholic Quarterly , “would imbue the 
minds of laymen and clergy alike with the varied 
and masterly literature of Greece ; but if he would 
willingly imbue them with this ancient and pagan 
lore, how much more with the patristic Greek 
of Irenaeus, Origen, the Cyrils of Alexandria 



Influence of Writers over Readers. 29 

and Jerusalem, Basil, Chrysostom and Athana- 

• 99 
S1US. * 

And for us, if it is our duty to have a knowledge 
of the great masters of the past ; if it is our duty, 
as it certainly is, to cultivate English literature in 
the present, it is a still higher and more sacred 
duty that our reading should be directed by such 
men and guided by such principles that the search 
for the treasure of knowledge may not make us 
lose the far more precious treasure of faith. 

Where mere literary judgment is concerned 
each should use the light of his own intelligence, 
but where there enter the question of faith and 
the eternal law of right and wrong an upright 
conscience must be a light to the intelligence. 

Richard Grant White lays down a principle. 
“ Throw the commentators to the dogs/’ says he, 
in speaking of Shakespeare, “ and read the author 
himself. Don’t take any man’s notes. Don’t take 
mine.” 

* American Catholic Quarterly, October, 1882. 


30 


Reading and the Mind. 


This principle in literary reading is good, if it 
were supposed that all who read have their minds 
formed to eternal truths, and may not be influ¬ 
enced by wrong or given a bias that may endanger 
their happiness here and in the life to come. For 
us it is all important to,read those authors who 
will strengthen us with truth before exposing our 
minds to the weakening shocks of error. 






CHAPTER IV. 


FALSE PRINCIPLES IN READING. 


'‘~J"'HERE are men who tear down, but who 
build up nothing. They sweep away with 
their pen the most sacred beliefs and plan nothing 
in their place that can satisfy a soul that has a 
spark of reason. “ We must not worship God, but 
heroes and men,” they tell us, “ and not according 
to what has been revealed and taught, but accord¬ 
ing to our whim or fancy or, better yet, not at all.” 
Nature is God, Man is God, Passion is God, or 
there is no God. 

And thus in many ways the fountains of litera¬ 
ture have been poisoned, according as the mind of 
the writer has been turned away from truth and 
right. 

Under cover of a spirit of liberality—intellectual 


32 


Reading and the Mind. 


freedom—freedom to use against the Maker that 
intellect which is His gift—are disguised thoughts 
against the divine teachings of our religion. 

There is a quiet stab in the dark at the sub¬ 
mission of our minds to that of God, a sneer at our 
love for the Mother of God, or a smile at our belief 
in the sacraments instituted by our Divine Re¬ 
deemer. 

Our poetry, as our prose, is tainted with Pan¬ 
theism and Atheism, and more recently with the 
manifold developments of Materialism, Rationalism 
and Agnosticism. All this is yearly developing 
and parading itself in our literature. 

But how is it that many well-meaning persons 
are misled, fascinated and almost totally ruined in 
mind by such theories ? Let us think for a mo¬ 
ment. A young man is told by some one for 
whom he has respect that a certain author, for 
instance Macaulay or Gibbon, is a master of style 
—a beautiful writer. What happens? He opens 
the book and, carried away by the charming flow 


False Principles in Reading. 33 

of language and happy combination of thought, 
is filled with admiration and brought completely 
under the influence of the writer. 

Such influence will be still more irresistible in a 
powerfully written novel or in a poet who has 
stirred up a transient “ craze.” The sympathies of 
the author become for a time those of the reader; 
the hearts of writer and reader beat in unison. 

Should the author’s mind be one tainted by un¬ 
sound principles, darkened by unhappiness or pas¬ 
sion—should it be filled with an embittered spirit 
against truth—then consciously or unconsciously 
the mind of the writer will color his work, and the 
mind of the reader will reflect it ; and, if not on his 
guard, thoughts which at first seemed to the reader 
too shocking to dwell upon may afterwards be 
deemed true and becoming, and his former judg¬ 
ment an exaggeration and bigotry, or rigorism. 

He will grow more liberal—and by this, too 
often, is meant that he withdraws his heart from 

allegiance to his God and to his Church—from 
3 


34 


Reading and the Mind. 


those to whom he owes much, whose thoughts are 
noble and good and faithful to what is right—and 
goes over to the ranks of the enemy. 

In sympathy and in conduct he sides with a man 
of whom he knows nothing, who has no claim to his 
affections or to his reverence or to his life, and thus, 
through weakness or fancy, he abandons the teach¬ 
ings of his childhood, the practice of well-doing, 
and becomes false, a traitor to truth and to duty. 

What, then, is to be done ? Must we, because 
of the evil to be feared, leave undone the good? 
Are we to read none of the English classic authors? 
Far from that. No such proposition has been laid 
down. It is precisely because of the evil to be 
avoided that we need the guidance of the good. 

There has been no special reference made to 
Shakespeare, Milton, Addison, Dryden, Pope, 
Coleridge, Lamb, Goldsmith, Gray, for these are 
English literature; b-ut we have been trying to 
make clear the necessity of a guide, that in our 
reading we may not fall into error. 


False Principles in Reading. 35 

Such a mind as Newman’s will be the one to 
instil solid principles, to teach true thought, to 
guard us against errors, sophisms and false views, 
to give firmness to the mind, and at the same time 
impart a true taste for real literature. 

We should read first those authors who will "ive 

o 

us a true appreciation of our own holy religion, so 
that when we see a Godless theory, or when we 
meet with a scoff or a sneer—and in a worldly 
world we shall often meet it—we may feel rejoiced 
in the thought that we possess such a precious 
treasure as our holy faith, and that for it all the 
treasures of literature, science and philosophy 
could give but a poor exchange. 

There is something needed to counteract the 
wrong in the literature of our day. It may not 
be as gross as that of other days, but it is more 
subtle and more dangerous, especially the more 
cleverly managed flauntings of Rationalism, Ag¬ 
nosticism and Theosophy. 

They appeal to what is so dear to the heart of 


1 


36 


Reading and the Mind. 


man, intellectual pride; or, to what is more flatter¬ 
ing to his inclinations, the higher coloring in liter¬ 
ature and art. They tell man that to be great, 
reason is enough; he does not need faith and even 
degrades himself by submitting to the teachings of 
the Almighty; that art and literature can get along 
quite well without either a moral law or a God. 

Much of this is the natural flow of the torrent 
when the flood-gates of evil are unbarred by what 
is called a liberal spirit. 

This liberal spirit stops nowhere. We must be 
liberal and large-minded, but there is a limit, or a 
man will find his mind so widened that it will be 
the fenceless field where wild cattle of every sort 
may enter to rove and trample without let or hin¬ 
drance. Then is the heart left no longer a fair 
field, but a barren waste. He will end by accept¬ 
ing the greatest outrages to truth, morality and 
religion without any, even internal, protest of dis¬ 
sent. 

If the greatest principles that ought to govern 



False Principles in Reading. 37 

man’s inner life as well as his external actions are 
deemed prejudices—or, at most, truths which may 
be accepted or rejected at will—if there is no 
internal protest of the reader that such ideas 
are wrong, what will be the result ? If we turn 
to Cardinal Newman we shall find no uncertain 
expression of his estimation of this so-called 
liberalism. 

“ Turn away from the Catholic Church, and to 
whom will you go ? ” he asks. “ It is your only 
chance for peace and assurance in this turbulent, 
changing world. There is nothing between it and 
scepticism, where men exert their reason freely; 
in the long run it will be found that either the 
Catholic religion is verily and indeed the coming-in 
of the unseen world into this, or that there is 
nothing positive, nothing dogmatic, nothing real 
in any of our notions as to whence we come and 
whither we are going. 

“Unlearn Catholicism, and you become Prot¬ 
estant, Unitarian, Deist, Pantheist, sceptic in a 


38 Reading and the Mind. 

dreadful but infallible succession ; only not infal¬ 
lible by some accident of your position, your 
education or of your cast of mind.” 

Such is his thought to those who seek outside 
of Catholic truth for happiness or greatness, even 
greatness of mind. 

When we are strong in the principles of faith 
much that otherwise would be injurious cannot 
harm us. We cannot reject literature even if it 
contained what is less true and less right, but we 
can and we ought to guard against its evils. 

It is not Catholic, as Cardinal Newman has told 
us, and we can never effect that it shall have been 
other than non-Catholic. 

This was said years ago, but since that time we 
have had men springing up who make literature 
famous for its Catholic writers. Thanks to Card¬ 
inal Newman, we may now say that one of the 
greatest writers that ever penned an English line 
was a Catholic. 

Recalling the words of Richard Grant White, we 


39 


False Principles in Reading. 

might say to the reader: Don’t take our ideas, 
though as far as lay in our power we have tried to 
verify them according to the principles upon which 
we propose them to you—don’t take them until, 
after having read the authors, you bring to bear 
upon them the light of your own Catholic mind. 

In our day there is a great deal of superficial 
criticism, a great deal of sham admiration for liter¬ 
ature by people who have read very little. The 
authors here proposed are those approved by our 
own reading, and though the tastes of many may 
differ from ours, the suggestions offered are given 
only after serious consideration. 


CHAPTER V. 


MASTERS IN PROSE—NEWMAN AND RUSKIN. 


two prose-authors that we would choose 
are John Henry Newman and John Ruskin. 

Why select them rather than so many others ? 
Why choose Newman ? One tires of hearing his 
name so frequently. And why Ruskin ? Where is 
Macaulay? What about De Quincey? Is not 
Burke a model ? Has not Johnson great thoughts? 
Can nothing be urged in favor of Addison? Will 
you leave out Irving? 

In answer it may be said that the meaning 
intended to be conveyed is not that these writers 
should be excluded, but that the young mind, by 
an exclusive study of any one of them, would be 
exposed to the danger of imitating their manner¬ 
isms and defects rather than the great excellencies 



Masters in Prose—Newman and Rnskin. 41 

to be found in them. Macaulay would be imitated 
rather in his artificial manner and prejudices than 
in his clear, rapid and brilliant style. 

De Quincey, with his magnificently stored but 
wavering intellect, might, like Johnson, lead the 
young writer into the danger of an involved or 
ponderous manner, without the same solidity of 
thought. 

Addison and Burke would provide most excel¬ 
lently polished material for study, and Irving the 
charm of a delicious humor, and thus perhaps 
make one value the way of saying a thing above 
the thing to be said. 

Let us not be misunderstood here, for many 
beauties, indeed, are to be found in each of these 
writers; but let us ask the question: If one were 
to choose, where will he find authors that combine 
the greatest good with the least number of imper¬ 
fections ? 

By observation of different characters, by careful 
reading and analysis, we have sought the authors 


42 


Reading and the Mind. 


that would give a young intelligence great, good 
and noble thoughts, strengthen its intellectual 
vigor and enlarge its capacity for knowledge and 
self-direction in later life. The result is in the 
choice presented. The difficulty was to find the 
smallest number that united the greatest perfec¬ 
tion of thought and style with the fewest dis¬ 
advantages in both; the conclusion is one not 
arrived at in a day, and whatever its value, is one 
that required no little care. 

Newman and Ruskin, though not on the same 
level, are two authors who may be our guides on 
account of the tone and development the reading 
of them will give to a well-disposed mind. For if 
reading ought to be something more than an idle 
pastime—if it is to have such a deep and lasting 
influence upon our thought—is it not of the highest 
importance to consider well to what sort of men 
we trust, perhaps, the future happiness of our 
lives? 

Some one has said, “It is nearly an axiom that 


Masters in Prose—Newman and Rusk he 43 

people will not be better than the books they 
read.” 

Whether this be true or not will depend much 
upon the character of the reader, and will bear 
interpretation similar to that which may be placed 
upon the principle, “ that every one is made either 
better or worse by every book one reads.” He 
will be dragged down by the evil he meets, or rise 
superior to it, and be elevated by the good. 

“As the ideas and images of men’s minds,” we 
are told by a modern writer, “are the invisible 
powers which govern men—which all men obey— 
it is the highest concernment that great care be 
taken of the understanding, to conduct it right in 
the search of knowledge, and in the judgment 
it makes.” 

This is especially true of the minds of the young. 
Reading is not merely the gathering of a stock of 
ideas; it is the gathering of material which the 
mind should work into thought. “ This is the 
point wherein great readers are apt to be mistaken. 


44 


Reading and the Mind. 


Those who have read of everything are thought 
to understand everything, too ; but it is not always 
so. Reading furnishes the mind only with mate¬ 
rials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes them 
ours; without this, what we read is but so much 
loose matter floating in the brain.” 

The mind should be early trained to this task of 
thinking while we are reading. At first the task is 
not easy, but use and exercise will give facility, 
and only those who have acquired it have the 
true key to books and the clue to lead them 
through the maze of opinions to certainty and 
truth. 

“ Those who are strangers to this method will 
be apt to think it too great a clog; they will imag¬ 
ine they shall make but little progress if in the 
books they read they must stop to examine and 
unravel every argument. I answer, this is a good 
objection and ought to weigh much with those 
whose reading is designed for much talk and little 
knowledge, and I have nothing to say to it. But 


Masters in Prose—Newman and Ruskin. 45 

it is the true way to knowledge, and to those who 
aim at that I may say that he who ‘ fair and softly’ 
goes forward in a course that points right will 
sooner be at his journey’s end than he who runs 
after every one he meets, even though he gallop 
all day at full speed. It is only in the beginning 
such thought is a clog; it soon becomes easy and 
a delight, and reading is made in truth a training 
for the intellect.” 

With this thought of the writer before us, and 
bearing in mind that we need a reading which will 
lead us to think aright, let us return to the two 
writers to whom we have invited attention—John 
Henry Newman and John Ruskin. 


CHAPTER VI. 


THE COMPLETENESS OF NEWMAN. 

TN Cardinal Newman’s writings we find the 
beauties of a varied style as the medium 
of the most solid and lasting thoughts. He is 
acknowledged by the reading world to have 
been the greatest master of English prose of 
our times. 

He is a man to whose noble life, heroic self- 
sacrifice and zeal for the glory of God’s Church 
we bow down in reverence, not only as to a lead¬ 
ing intellect in his times, but as to a character for 
whose parallel we might challenge the world in 
vain. His history is well known, but we can never 
tire of learning the beauties of his great mind 
from his own strong words. 

The love of God spoke to him from the flowers 




The Completeness of Newman. 47 

and the hills as it spoke to the hearts of poets. 
But his is a poetry far more sublime than we are 
wont to hear, and his unmeasured but rhythmical 
lines fall on the ear with a music sweeter than 
verse. 

Listen to him as he describes the influence of- 
classic authors on men’s intellects: “Let us con¬ 
sider, too,” he writes,* “ how differently young 
and old are affected by the words of some classic 
author, such as Homer or Horace. 

“ Passages which to a boy are but rhetorical 
commonplaces, neither better nor worse than a 
hundred others which any clever writer might 
supply—which he gets by heart and thinks very 
fine, and imitates, as he thinks successfully, in his 
own flowing versification—at length come home 
to him when long years have passed and he 
has had experience of life; and they pierce him 
as if he had never before known them with their 
sad earnestness and vivid exactness. 

* Newman : Grammar of Assent, p. 75. 


4 8 


Reading and the Mind. 

“Then he comes to understand how it is that 
lines—the birth of some chance morning or even¬ 
ing at an Ionian festival, or among the Sabine 
Hills—have lasted generation after generation for 
thousands of years with a power over the mind 
and a charm which the current literature of the 
day, with all its obvious advantages, is utterly 
unable to rival.” 

Whether Newman treats of education, as in the 
“Idea of a University,” or of history, as in his 
sketches; whether he speaks of the Mother of God 
with the fondness of a child, or rises to a contem¬ 
plation of the mysteries of the Trinity—on all 
these varied subjects we find a grasp and treat¬ 
ment that make us feel we stand in the presence 
of a deep thinker, a lofty soul, a mind stored with 
marvellous wisdom and enriched by the mellowed 
experiences of a long and good life. 

To bring out the thought and style of Newman 
more in relief, we may compare him with Ruskin 
and contrast him with Carlyle. 



The Completeness of Newman. 49 

This viewing of a character between parallel 
lines was the favorite method of that prince of 
biographers, Plutarch. By deepening the shadows 
and varying the light it brings out in greater ful¬ 
ness the merits of each and gives an image of the 
man. 

Newman has the music of Ruskin and the pre¬ 
cious gift of faith which that author, unhappily, 
has not. His vigor and depth are greater than 
Carlyle’s without that writer’s abrupt jaggedness 
and illogical assumptions. But as to the teaching 
of right thought these two are not to be men¬ 
tioned in the same breath. 

Carlyle presumed that the world was wrong and 
everything in it, and that, unless he or some 
teacher like himself were listened to, the world 
would rush on to ruin. No one who has read him 
can deny to him certain great merits, but if we take 
the tenor of his works and the scope of his views 
we must conclude that, if God wished to change 

the face of the universe by some new method out- 
( 4 ) 


50 


Reading and the Mind. 

side the plan of his general Providence, he would 
have chosen a representative less unlike the proph¬ 
ets and apostles than is Mr. Thomas Carlyle. 

But in many non-Catholic writers how much do 
we find of noble thought for the choosing ! Even 
if mingled with bias and prejudice, it is still elo¬ 
quent of Catholic beauty and truth. 


CHAPTER VII. 


SUGGESTIVENESS OF RUSKIN. 

MONG non-Catholic writers there is none, 



perhaps, so healthful in his influence, so 
suggestive in his thought, as John Ruskin. Some 
men say of him: “ He’s an enthusiast, ridiculously 
inconsistent.” These things are easily said, yet are 
not these amiable qualifications found in other 
authors? And where, with them or without, shall 
we find the world of good sense, the suggestive¬ 
ness and the wondrous power of language to be 
found in Ruskin ? 

The work which Ruskin began in urging men 
to deeds, not dreams, will live. His influence in 
elevating the higher circles, and in raising and 
directing the aspirations of the working classes of 
English society, is such that, whatever its short- 


52 


Reading and the Mind. 


comings, it will not be confined to a narrow range, 
but will grow and spread itself while there remains 
in men the desire to do what is real and right and 
true. 

Ruskin was an art critic by profession, and yet 
in his “Construction of Sheepfolds ” he sought to 
give us plans for a perfect religion. This was not 
strictly within the sphere of an artist. 

Again, he is carried away with admiration at the 
grandeur of the art of the Catholic Church ; but 
at the same time, although he sees it, though it 
appears to him as something noble, the prejudices 
in which he has been educated prevent him from 
an acknowledgment of her truth. Such things, 
though they do not excite admiration, may be 
passed over ; for there is a grandeur and a poetry 
in his thoughts that open to the reader ever-widen¬ 
ing fields of wonder and delight. His “ Modern 
Painters” teems with thought that may be applied 
not only to the art of which he treats, but to the 
various occupations and actions of life. 



Suggestiveness of Ruskin. 


53 


His great merit is sincerity. He began by 
warning painters to be true to nature in delineat¬ 
ing the forms of clouds, trees and flowers, and he 
enlarged his teaching by applying this principle 
of trueness to sincerity of life. 

No other author can, like Ruskin, compel one 
to pause over a passage and see new and newer 
thoughts come rolling in and raising the mind in 
an ecstasy of wonder at the power of suggestion 
which one mind can exert over another. To give 
an instance, see how closely he observes nature, 
and what lessons he is taught by the sky: 

“ It is a strange thing how little in general 
people know about the sky.* It is the part of 
creation in which nature has done more for the 
sake of pleasing man, more for the sole and evi¬ 
dent purpose of talking to him and teaching him, 
than in any other of her works, and it is just the 
part in which we least attend to her. 

“ Every essential purpose of the sky might, as 

* Ruskin : Modern Painters—Clouds. 


54 


Reading and the Mind. 


far as we know, be answered, if once in three days, 
or thereabouts, a great, ugly, black rain cloud were 
brought up over the blue and everything well 
watered, and so all left blue again till the next 
time, with perhaps a film of morning and evening 
mist for dew. 

“ And instead of this, there is not a moment of 
any day of our lives when nature is not producing 
scene after scene, picture after picture, glory after 
glory, and working still upon such exquisite and 
constant principles of the most perfect beauty 
that it is quite certain it is all done for us, and 
intended for our perpetual pleasure. 

“ And every man, wherever placed, however far 
from other sources of interest or beauty, has this 
being done for him constantly—the sky is for all; 
bright as it is, it is not too bright nor good for 
human nature’s daily food.” 

In another passage we find an example of his 
colloquial style, and a specimen of humorous good 


sense: 



Suggestiveness of Ruskin. 


55 


"The first object of all work—not the principal 
one, but the first and necessary one—is to get 
food, clothes, lodging and fuel. It is quite pos¬ 
sible to have too much of all these things. I know 
a great many gentlemen who eat too large dinners, 
a great many ladies who have too many clothes. 
I know there is lodging to spare in London, for I 
have several houses there myself which I can’t let; 
and I know there is fuel to spare everywhere, since 
we get up steam to pound the roads with while 
our men stand idle—or drink till they can’t stand 
idle or any otherwise. 

“ In their way—as I do not doubt you will 
believe—I am very fond of both (science and art), 
and I am sure it will be beneficial for the British 
nation to be lectured upon the merits of Michael 
Angelo, and the nodes of the moon. But I should 
strongly object myself to being lectured on either 
while I was hungry and cold; and I suppose the 
same view of the matter will be taken by the 
greater number of British citizens in those pre- 


56 


Reading and the Mind . 


dicaments. So that I am convinced their present 
eagerness for instructions in painting and astron¬ 
omy proceeds from an impression in their minds 
that, somehow, they must paint or star-gaze them¬ 
selves into clothes and victuals. 

“ Now, it is perfectly true that you may some¬ 
times sell a picture for a thousand pounds; but 
the chances are greatly against your doing so, 
much more than the chances of a lottery. In the 
first place you must paint a very clever picture; 
and the chances are greatly against your doing 
that. In the second place you must meet with an 
amiable picture-dealer; and the chances arc some¬ 
what against your doing that. In the third place 
the amiable picture-dealer must meet with a fool; 
and the chances are not always in favor even of 
his doing that—though, as I gave exactly the sum 
in question for a picture, myself, only the other 
day, it is not for me to say so.” 

It is hardly necessary to allude to the difference 
of style in the preceding two selections. 


Suggestiveness of Ruskin. 


57 


Ruskin is not perfect. There are in him views 
that jar upon one’s mind. Some theories are 
more speculative than practical. Tennyson char¬ 
acterizes him as a man who said many foolish 
things* — hardly a generous appreciation. No 
doubt we may grant that; but a great many great 
men have said foolish things, and therefore that is 
not precisely the way to estimate the merits of a 
writer. If Tennyson had tuned to verse some of 
Ruskin’s nobler thoughts he would have been 
guilty of fewer trivialities than at present appear 
in some of his writings. 

Thoughts of Ruskin will live when both the 
foolish and wise-things that Tennyson may have 
said shall have ceased to occupy the minds of 
earnest men. 

* Alfred Tennyson : Pen Sketches of Authors—John Ruskin. 


CHAPTER VIII. 


POETRY AS A LITERARY STUDY. 

TS it only in prose that we find thought worthy 
our attention ; or does it exist in poetry ? 
Do serious men care for poetry ? Isn’t there a 
wonderful amount of moonshine about it ? 

You remember the dear old Scotch gentleman 
of whom Professor Shairp speaks, “ one of the 
most sagacious and wise of his generation,” who, 
whenever anything unusually extravagant or ab¬ 
surd was proposed, used to dismiss it with a wave 
of his hand, saying: “ Oh, that is poetry!”'" 

“ And yet, ” continues the professor, “ that gen¬ 
tleman was one who could see in the outlines of 
his native hills, and feel in all human relations, 
whatever was most beautiful. 

* Prof. Shairp : Poetic Interpretation of Nature, 


Poetry as a Literary Study. 


59 


“ There are, I dare say, a good many sensible 
people who share that view to whom poetry is 
only another name for what is fanciful, fantastic, 
unreal—only, as one called it, a convenient way 
of talking nonsense. 

“ To these I would say, if this be so, if poetry 
be not true, if it have not a real foundation in the 
nature of things ; if genuine poetry be not as true 
a form of thinking as any other, indeed, one of 
the highest forms of human thought, then I should 
not recommend any one to waste time on it, but 
to have done with it, and turn to more solid 
pursuits. 

“ It is because I believe poetry to have a true 
and noble place in this order of things, a place 
not made by the conceit of man, but intended by 
the Maker of this order, "because I hold poetry to 
be what Wordsworth has called it, the breath and 
finer spirit of all knowledge, to be * immortal as the 
heart of man ’—it is because of these convictions 
that there is claimed for it the serious regard of 


6o 


Reading and the Mind ’ 

reasonable men. For this reason it seems worth 
our while to dwell for a little on one aspect of 
this study, and ask what does it mean.”* 

There is no truth cognizable by man which may 
not shape itself into poetry. Wherever the sensa¬ 
tions, thoughts, feelings of man can travel, there 
the poet may be at his side and find materials for 
his faculties to work on. The one condition of 
his working is that the object pass out of the 
region of mere dry fact, or abstract notion, into 
the warm and breathing realm of imagination. 

In the words of Bacon, “ Poetry serveth and con¬ 
ferred to magnanimity, morality and delectation, 
and therefore it was ever thought to have some 
participation of divineness.” Or, in the still briefer 
and more beautiful language of Festus : “ Poetry 
is itself a thing of God. He made his prophets 
poets.” f 

Poetry cannot be circumscribed by a definition 

* Prof. Shairp : Poetic Interpretation of Nature, 
f Philip James Bailey : Festus. Proem. 


Poetry as a Literary Study . 61 

any more than we can tie up a ray of light, or 
measure the width of sound. But it must contain 
truth and beauty, be noble thought expressed in 
noble language, and, under the inspiring glow of 
imagination, have reference to Nature, God and 
Man. This we know, as we know that sound must 
be vibration, and that light must have brightness. 

All who have been called poets are not so, but 
we would mention three, not to the exclusion of 
others, in whom we shall try to point out what is 
meant by this truth and beauty, this noble thought 
in noble language, and the heart of Nature speak¬ 
ing to the heart of Man. 

Some minds might choose other poets; we have 
here taken those who in their whole range seem to 
appeal to what is noblest and tenderest, and who 
have rarely proposed to our view any thought but 
one that would elevate and make us nobler. 

The first we shall mention will be the poet 
Wordsworth. Never has there been a poet more 
reverently loved by those who have given him 


62 


Reading and the Mind. 


deep study, and less liked by those who know him 
but little. 

It is the old principle. Where the subject is 
worthy, the greater the knowledge the greater the 
love. Satires, caricatures in the style of the “ Re¬ 
jected Addresses ” of Horace and James Smith, or 
scraps of two of his shorter poems, are all that is 
known by many of his great mind. 


CHAPTER IX. 


WORDSWORTH AND NATURE. 

^y^ORDSWORTH will not be popular, but 
he will be loved by those who have had a 
wide range of reading and bring to him an appre¬ 
ciative mind. When Jeffrey told him in the Edin¬ 
burgh Review that his poem, “ The Excursion,” 
“ would never do,” the poet responded : “ It must 
do. I very well know that my work will be 
unpopular, but I know, too, that it will be im¬ 
mortal.” 

And his fame grew and is growing, and to-day 
his thoughts are interwoven with the workings of 
the greatest minds. The orator, the poet, the 
scientist, the philosopher, all find in him a mine 
of thought, of a depth, a variety, a simplicity 
nowhere so rich, except in the kingly wealth of 


64 


Reading and the Mind. 


Shakespeare. “He has thrown off the shackles 
with which poetry was hampered in the time of 
Pope/’* and whatever beauty of original diction 
and graceful expression Tennyson possesses, he 
owes much of it to Wordsworth, who has dared to 
lead the way in the noble expression of his own 
thoughts, in the great fearlessness of his reflective 
mind. 

Wordsworth seeks truth and thought that fall 
upon the human heart and sink into its inner 
depths. Above the jingle of mere harmonious 
verse, he wastes not the energy of our minds when, 
in simple language, he brings home to us a thought 
that oftentimes “ lies too deep for tears.” 

There are other poets more brilliant and attrac¬ 
tive than Wordsworth. Many of his pieces are 
weak and not a few of his lines tame. There is not 
claimed for him a dazzling splendor; his greatness 
lies in the world of high thought that leads man 
on in life and ever to a higher plane. With poetic 

* Prof. Shairp : Aspects of Poetry—Wordsworth. 


Wordsworth and Nature . 


65 


truth and poetic beauty he applies thought to the 
relations of nature to the soul of man, and ex¬ 
presses the truths suggested by these relations— 
and in this is the true interpretation of nature. 

“ He has been well abused,” says one of our 
eminent writers. “ Shelley bemoaned him, Mr. 
Browning has flouted him, and following these all 
the smaller fry of liberalism have snarled at his 
heels.” * 

We do not find perfection in Wordsworth—not 
the sweet cadence of melodies that require no in¬ 
tellectual effort; not poems like the paintings of 
some moderns where you find all the skill and 
color that could be desired, but not the soul of 
the artist. 

We do not find in him the richness of language 
and imagery of Shelley, Tennyson and Keats. 
His noble thoughts would not lie hampered by 
such finery. 

It is true that his theory of poetic thought with- 

* Matthew Arnold : Poems of Wordsworth. Preface, p. xxi. 

5 


66 


Reading and the Mind. 


out poetic expression was an exaggeration, and he 
himself, in one of his finer passages, did not adhere 
to the theory. He was struggling against that 
artificial swaddling of empty and gaudy epithets 
that was cramping and smothering poetry, and the 
result was a more natural growth of the muse. 

In Keats, Shelley and Tennyson we do not find 
the soul-stirring thought that springs from Words, 
worth. And if thought is more than words, so is 
Wordsworth’s poetry nobler and more real than 
theirs. They have their merit and he has his; it 
is not hard to choose. 

We find in him the stirring, clear voice of a man 
of character, that rings out in firm tones which 
pierce into the heart, and we rise to our feet and 
say, This is a man, his thought is true, and since 1 
should love God’s nature so well, I should love and 
serve nature’s God the better, and thus be more 
the man. 

Such is the man from whom we may learn the 
truth of poetic thought. If we wish for the por- 


Wordsworth and Nature. 


67 


trayal of the mere sensibilities or affections, we 
find that in other poets who can boast no other 
merit, but as Henry Crabbe Robinson, a keen 
observer, has noted— 

“ Wordsworth admits that his sensibility is ex¬ 
cited by objects which produce no effect on others, 
and is proud of it. He cannot be accused of being 
insensible to the real concerns of life. He does 
not waste his feelings on unworthy objects, for he 
is alive to the actual interests of society.” 

Familiarity with his thoughts will give to them 
a significance that ever grows deeper, and find 
them endowed with an unsuspected beauty. 

His religious opinions, especially in some of his 
sonnets, we cannot accept, but count it a pity that 
such a mind had not the light of faith. Though 
not ours, to his poetic thought we may lend the 
willing ear, as we do to the winged words of New¬ 
man and the suggestive soarings of Ruskin. 

Should we learn to love Wordsworth, and un¬ 
derstand how his thought is to be valued above 


68 Reading and the Mind. 

the poetic chaff that lies in bushels in the mart of 
poesy, we must thank Heaven for the gift; it is a 
precious one. As in painting, one may see through 
the color and form and grasp the fulness of what 
they were intended to represent, or in music may 
discern over and above the melody a deeper mean¬ 
ing coming from the soul of the master, and yet be 
content that others flatter themselves that a daub 
or a tune is painting or music—as for them it is— 
so, one who hears the full sound of the poetic 
voice speaking from the very soul of living nature 
envies not those who beguile themselves with its 
faintest echoes. 

Why does the reading of him fill the heart, so 
much more than other poets do, with peace and 
noble thoughts and rest ? It is because he gives 
us joy. You will notice any effect but this from 
the reading of Tennyson or Shelley or Keats. 

The heart of Wordsworth is at peace, and all 
objects speak to him of a God of gladness. The 
cause of his greatness, in the words of a com- 



Wordsworth and Nature. 69 

petent observer, “ is simple and may be told 
simply.” 

Wordsworth’s poetry is great because of the 
extraordinary power with which Wordsworth feels 
the joy offered to us in nature ; the joy offered in 
the simple primary affections and duties, and be¬ 
cause of the extraordinary power with which he 
presents it so as to make us share it. 

This spirit we find in his “ Skylark,” his ode on 
the “ Intimations of Immortality ” and in countless 
places throughout his other poems. We select, as 
an illustration of his spirit of joy, “ The Skylark,” 
and of his communion with nature a portion of his 
immortal ode. 

In The Skylark ” we discern a spirit that feels 
the weight of life’s sorrows, but rises above them 
borne on the wings of a joyous hope. 

Up with me ! up with me into the clouds ! 

For thy song, lark, is strong, 

Up with me ! up with me into the clouds! 

Singing, singing. 

With clouds and sky about thee ringing, 


70 


Reading and the Mind. 


Lift me, guide me till I find 

That spot which seems so to thy mind ! 

I have walked through wildernesses dreary. 

And to-day my heart is weary ; 

Had I now the wings of a Faery 
Up to thee would I fly. 

There’s madness about thee, and joy divine 
In that song of thine ; 

Lift me, guide me high and high 
To thy banqueting place in the sky. 

Joyous as morning, 

Thou art laughing and scorning ; 

Thou hast a nest for thy love and thy rest. 

And though little troubled with sloth, 

Drunken lark ! thou would’st be loth 
To be such a traveller as I. 

Happy, happy liver 

With a soul as strong as a mountain river. 

Pouring out praise to the Almighty Giver, 

Joy and jollity be with us both ! 

Alas ! my journey, rugged and uneven, 

Through prickly moors or dusty ways must wind 
But hearing thee, or others of thy kind 
As full of gladness and as free of heaven, 

I, with my fate contented, will plod on 

And hope for higher raptures when Life’s day is done.* 

* Arnold’s Edition of Wordsworth. The Skylark. 


Wordszvortk and Nature . 


7i 


We see sympathy with and real love for nature 
his well-known ode.* 

There was a time when meadow, grove and stream. 

The earth and every common sight. 

To me did seem 
Apparelled in celestial light, 

The glory and the freshness of a dream. 

It is not now as it hath been of yore: 

Turn wheresoe’er I may, 

Ily night or day. 

The things which I have seen, I now can see no more. 

* * * * * 

And O ye fountains, meadows, hills and groves, 

Think not of any severing of our loves ! 

Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might; 

I only have relinquished one delight 
To live beneath your more habitual sway. 

I love the brooks which down their channels fret, 

Even more than when I tripped lightly as they ; 

The innocent brightness of a new-born day 
Is lovely yet ;— 

The clouds that gather round the setting sun 
Do take a sober coloring from an eye 
That hath kept watch o’er man's mortality ; 

Another race hath been, and other palms are won. 


Arnold’s Edition of Wordsworth. Intimations of Immortality. 


72 


Reading and the Mind. 


Thanks to the human heart by which we live, 

Thanks to its tenderness, its joys and fears,— 

To me the meanest flower that blows can give 
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears. 

There must have been something very noble 
the mind of that poet who, though not a Cathol 
wrote these lines on the Blessed Virgin: 

Mother ! whose virgin bosom was uncrosst 
With the least shade of thought to sin allied ; 

Woman ! above all women glorified, 

Our tainted nature’s solitary boast^- 
Purer than foam on central ocean tost, 

Brighter than eastern skies at daybreak strewn 
With fancied roses, than the unblemished moon 
Before her wane begins on heaven’s blue coast— 

Thy Image falls to earth. Yet some, I ween, 

Not unforgiven, the suppliant knee might bend. 

As to a visible power in which did blend 
All that was mixed and reconciled in thee 
Of mother’s love with maiden purity,— 

Of high with low, celestial with terrene 


CHAPTER X. 


TENNYSON AND ART. 


STRIKING contrast to Wordsworth is pre¬ 



sented by the poet Tennyson. How brill¬ 
iant and graceful are the pictures of his pen! 
Who has not been charmed by the melodious 
music of his verse? 

Sweet as is the song of Tennyson, and tender as 
are the chords which at times he touches, though 
remarkable his powers over verse and language, 
yet a great poet in the sense of having real power 
over the heart of man and deep sympathy with 
nature we do not think him. 

Those who have learned to admire Tennyson 
may deem this an unfair view. He is certainly 
attractive and grows upon one, but if we read him 


74 


Reading and the Mind. 


carefully we shall find that the heart yearns for 
something more real and true and certain than 
what he offers us. 

Poetry must idealize and raise to the realm of 
the imagination that which it presents. But what 
it presents must have “ its root in truth,” or never 
will it “blossom into a beauty”* that touches the 
heart of man. 

Tennyson, by combining the most exquisite dic¬ 
tion with serious thought, brings before our view 
scenes of the days of chivalry, bright pictures, 
indeed, but the brilliant personages of his longer 
poems seem not to have the warmth and life and 
soul of living men. 

He has wrapped philosophy and science in 
a new vesture and married them to “ immortal 
verse” as it has seldom been done by English 
poets before him. But is he a poet of nature? 
Does he really move the heart ? Do we rise from 
his reading with the same love for the man and 

* Leigh Hunt : Definition of Poetry. 


Tennyson and Art. 


75 


with the higher aspirations that we do from the 
reading of Longfellow or Wordsworth ? 

The question can be answered best by those 
who have studied deeply the three authors. The 
thought of that great restlessness and void and 
unsatisfied state of mind produced by him has 
grown more clear with the lapse of years and 
more careful comparative study. 

Tennyson may be admired as most skilful in 
the use of beautiful language. But grant him an 
artist’s skill in the weaving of thought—a skill 
that few can rival, a power of imagery that en¬ 
trances the reader, a magic combination of word- 
pictures and flow of song to which we can find no 
parallel in our day ; grant him a certain weight of 
thought and an occasional stroke of power, and still 
the question is the same. Is Tennyson a great poet ? 

A graceful writer the world and every intelligent 
reader must proclaim him—a singer with many 
sweet melodies. Witness his “Break, Break,” 
“Sweet and Low,” “Late, So Late.” 


j 6 Reading and the Mind. 

The “ In Memoriam,” “Princess,” “Maud” and 
the “Idyls” are gems; but the beauty there is 
rather that of the cold mosaic than of “ the 
human face divine.” Or, if it is the beauty of 
the human countenance, a peaceful or happy 
soul does not beam through it. Here is where 
the intelligent reader, who wishes to be candid 
with himself, must discriminate. 

Tennyson should have the full measure of es¬ 
teem and admiration that is his due—and the 
measure is not small—but no more. What is it, 
amid such beauty, that makes us feel that some¬ 
thing in it, after all, is “out of joint”? Is it 
not that his sadness glides down to despair, 
his melancholy lapses into hopelessness? 

Examine his poems and see if the affirmative 
answer to this suggestion would be a gratuitous 
one. We seem ever to hear a sigh after something 
that is hopeless; ever a wail for sad, sad days 
gone by—often most beautifully uttered yet only 
a regretful wail, with very little of a brightening 


Tennyson and Art . 


77 


glimmer of joy to look forward to in life, or 
after it. 

This is not enough. It leaves the heart beaten 
down by a weight of sorrow—not a soothing sor- 
sow, but bitter and disturbed. 

Sadness is an essential element in poetry—grief 
and sorrow go home to the heart of every human 
being—but not the sadness of despair, not the 
gloom of endless death. True human sorrow has 
ever in it a gleam of hope, but Tennyson’s “ Cal¬ 
vary has no Easter.” 

It may be that the death of Arthur Hallam 
changed “the current of his being.” Possibly. 
But although the poet excuses his dejection, the 
unrelieved woe is oppressive. 

The same strain runs through many of his other 
poems. In “Mariana” the hopelessness falls upon 
us: “He cometh not, she said; I am aweary, 
aweary ; I would that I were dead ! ” 

A soul whose endless refrain is a cry of mourn¬ 
ing for a light gone out in the past and never 


78 


Reading and the Mind ’ 


to be rekindled cannot be a happy singer. His 
song may be sweet to him, but he cannot make 
his listeners joyous, and if his melodies ring the 
chords of despair they cannot bring a healthful 
sadness. 


—“ My heart is wasted with my woe, Oriana— 
There is no rest for me below, Oriana ; 

When the long dim wolds are ribbed with snow, 
And loud the Norland whirlwinds blow, Oriana— 
Alone I wander to and fro, Oriana. 

Thou best beneath the greenwood tree, 

I dare not die and come to thee, Oriana— 

I hear the roaring of the sea, Oriana,” 


And there the poet leaves us, and the heart is 
left uncomforted amid that cheerless “ roaring of 
the sea.” 

“The motive that is so sadly wanting in our 
modern literature and art is faith*—a living, 
energizing faith in the fact that all this unin¬ 
telligible tangle of the natural world is in very 
truth working together for good ; a faith stronger 

* Cotterhill: Study of Poetry, p. 120. 



Tennyson and Art. 


79 


far than the faint-hearted trust taught us by 
Tennyson.” * 

O yet we trust that somehow good 
Will be the final goal of ill. 
***** 

Behold, we know not anything ; 

I can but trust that gOod shall fall 
At last—far off—at last, to all. 

And every winter change to spring. 

Is not this despairing melancholy deeply im¬ 
pressed on our literature ? 

I falter where I firmly trod. 

And falling with my weight of cares 
Upon the great world’s altar stairs 
That slope through darkness up to God, 

I stretch lame hands of faith ; and grope, 

And gather dust and chaff, and call 
To what I feel is Lord of all. 

And faintly trust the larger hope. 

Is it necessary to quote more? We have but to 
read through the “ In Memoriam ” and the “Idyls” 
to feel amid all their startling beauty that there is 
an unsatisfying and unsatisfied groping after some- 

* Tennyson : In Memoriam. 


8o 


Reading and the Mind . 


thing that calms no more than the sea’s roaring 
can fill the heart with rest. 

Contrast for a moment these two pictures of 
Grief, one by Tennyson, the other by Longfellow : 

IN MEMORIAM.* 

O sorrow, cruel fellowship, 

O Priestess in the vaults of Death, 

O sweet and bitter in a breath, 

What whispers from thy lying lip ? 

* * * * * 

And all the phantom nature stands 
With all the music in her tone, 

A hollow echo of my own,— 

A hollow form with empty hands. 

And shall I take a thing so blind. 

Embrace her as my natural good ; 

Or crush her like a vice of blood, 

Upon the threshold of my mind ? 

RESIGNATION, f 

There is no flock, however watched and tended, 

But one dead lamb is there ; 

There is no fireside, howsoe’er defended, 

But has one vacant chair ! 
***** 

* Tennyson: In Memoriam. 
f Longfellow : Resignation. 


Tennyson and Art . 


81 


Let us be patient ! These severe afflictions 
Not from the ground arise. 

But oftentimes celestial benedictions 
Assume this dark disguise. 

***** 

She is not dead—the child of our affection,— 

But gone unto that school 
Where she no longer needeth our protection. 

And Christ himself doth rule. 

In that great cloister's stillness and seclusion, 

By guardian angels led, 

Safe from temptation, safe from sin’s pollution 
She lives whom we call dead. 

***** 

And though at times impetuous with emotion 
And anguish long suppressed, 

The swelling heart heaves moaning like the ocean, 

That cannot be at rest,— 

We will be patient, and assuage the feeling 
We may not wholly stay ; 

By silence sanctifying, not concealing, 

The grief that must have way. 

These are two poets writing of the sorrow caused 

by the death and absence of a loved one. Which 

of these has the truer ring, and which teaches the 

heart the right bearing of human sorrow ? 

6 


8 2 


Reading and the Mind . 

Tennyson tells us of sadness, wrong and gaiety, 
but he does not lift us with a strong right hand, 
nor guide us in the fulness of our many-sided 
natures, nor sweep the heartstrings of our affec¬ 
tions, nor lead us upward. 

In his “ Poet’s Song ” we read,, and pause at the 
words of the nightingale who says : “ I have sung 
many songs, but never a one so gay ; for he sings 
of what the world will be, when the years have 
passed away.” Such is not the theme of Tenny¬ 
son’s poems. 

The novelty of his style and the charm of his 
imagery, so delightful when one can be content 
with that, may leave hidden from the casual reader 
the deeper current that runs below ; but even then 
it is felt that the flow is not that of a mind which 
grasps truth and the full significance of life, and 
no other can be a right teacher. 

Some have found in Tennyson many meanings, 
and remarkable among them is a spiritual meaning 
that shows in the interpreter a close study and 


Tennyson and Art . 


83 


ingenious application, and as this meaning has met 
the approbation of Tennyson himself, whatever 
intent at the time of writing may have been in the 
poet’s mind—and no sign was ever given that this 
intent was there—it becomes for the future one of 
the meanings of the Idyls.* 

Another writer, an early friend of Tennyson and 
true admirer of the poet’s art and thought, and a 
warm sympathizer with his teachings, confesses 
that what he finds akin to him in the poet’s mind 
is the “ higher pantheism ”—that lofty thought 
which flings aside the fetters of half the creeds 
and launches freely forth on the wings of honest 
doubt, repudiating as it were the restraints of 
ascetic life, or any bond that can bring a shackle 
to the senses. 

Far removed, indeed, is this teaching from the 
spiritual meaning of Tennyson, and yet it must be 
confessed this author has made no hurried review 
of the poet’s words, but diving into the honeyed 
* Catholic World: April. C. B. Pallen. 


8 4 


Reading and the Mind. 


depths seems to have drunk in a sweetness not 
strange to his own mind, which, he admits, is not 
likely to be burdened by ascetic ways or creeds, 
but revels unswathed in the higher realms of 
reason .* 

In starting, we took the principle of choosing 
for our authors those who would teach us to think 
aright, but the later developments of Tennyson’s 
muse have not added to his reputation as a poet, 
nor ought these later poems be considered by any 
reasonable man as valuable acquisitions in the line 
of right poetic thought. 

Another poem was represented some time ago, 
and of it a London critic speaks thus: “ Every 
one has now heard of the disastrous failure of Mr. 
Tennyson’s new rustic drama, ‘The Promise of 
May.’ Those who put the failure as due to the 
poor representation forget that the laureate’s hero 
is really not a human being, but rather a col¬ 
lection of odious propositions, in morals, meta- 
* Cf. Roden Noel : Poetry of Tennyson. 


Tennyson and Art. 


85 


physics, theology and political and social philos¬ 
ophy. 

“ There are things in this world which no art or 
skill can make go well together; and among these 
we may assuredly class the language of an agnostic 
lecturer, united to the airs and graces of what is 

termed a lady-killer. 

♦ 

“ After all, the audience did not grow first weary 
and then impatient, then sarcastic and rude, be¬ 
cause a wicked man constantly uttering wicked 
abstract propositions was set before them.” * 

This is a hard criticism, and certainly it is to be 
regretted that in addition to the “ Queen Mary,” 
“ Harold ” and the “ Heavy Brigade ” Tennyson 
should have written the “ Promise of May.” 

All we have to observe here is this: Is it prob¬ 
able that Tennyson, if in all his poems his thought 
was sound and right, would have developed sud¬ 
denly into such a train as that just referred to, or 
was the tendency and approach to it gradual and 
* London Graphic , Nov. 18, 1882. 


86 


Reading and the Mind. 


its spirit visible? To one who thinks and ob¬ 
serves, the under-current is not difficult to dis¬ 
cern. 

In this judgment of Tennyson it has been our 
aim to give him all the admiration due to such 
great merit, but at the same time to point out the 
element that is wanting. 

And just here it is in place to quote the words 
of a philosopher who shows that even the poet 
must be true in his thought. Speaking of Sir 
William Hamilton’s idea of belief and knowledge, 
he says : 

“ When, further, Hamilton teaches that we 
believe the infinite yet cannot conceive it or know 
it as possible, he does not wish to retract his dec¬ 
laration that what we believe we must always to 
some extent likewise know ; but he falls certainly 
into an appearance of contradiction, and beyond 
apology his views are at times misty and mis¬ 
leading. Perhaps it was some participation in 
them which prompted the line at the opening 


Tennyson and Art. 87 

of ‘In Menvoriam ’—‘Believing what we cannot 
know.’ ” * 

Surely Father Rickaby is able to judge of 
philosophic truth in a poem as well as others, 
and thus, sharing Hamilton’s theory, Tennyson’s 
thought is, beyond apology, at times misty and 
misleading. 

In an article in the American Catholic Quar¬ 
terly f Mr. George Parsons Lathrop, in a keenly 
discerning way, distinguishes between Tenny¬ 
son’s poetic talent, and his right idea of truth 
and Christian Faith. It notably coincides with 
Father Rickaby’s view of Tennyson’s misty ideas 
of truth. 

* John Rickaby, S. J. : First Principles of Knowleage (Storm- 
hurst series), p. 48. 

\ American Catholic Quarterly , January, 1893. 


CHAPTER XI. 


LONGFELLOW AND THE SOUL. 

POET to whom we would now call atten¬ 



tion as having, if not great, surely right and 
true poetic thought is Longfellow. His poetry 
seems to come to us, to use his own words, “ as a 
feather is wafted downward from an eagle in his 
flight.” 

H is characteristics have ever seemed to be the 
outcome of a noble but gentle nature ; one that 
has the aspirations of a lofty mind, but has seen 
the sorrows of life. They have not, however, 
darkened a bright soul and set it at useless repin¬ 
ing, but they have chastened a lofty spirit, and 
made it learn to feel for the sorrows of others. 

How many young minds has he not set aglow 
with the desire of great things by the “ Psalm of 


Longfellow and the Soul. 


89 


Life,” and “ Excelsior,” and by his lessons of 
labor, patience and resignation! How many a 
broken-hearted mother, weeping at the loss of her 
little one, has taken new courage when she thought 
how 

“ The Reaper came that day, 

'Twas an angel visited the green earth 
And took the flowers away ! ” 

With what pathos does he not steal into our 
hearts and open a glimpse of a higher life than 
ours, raise us above ourselves and the world and 
time ! 

But never is he so beautiful as when, in a 

Catholic spirit, he unfolds to us the beauty of 

* 

Catholic thought. We see this spirit in his smaller 
poems, all through “ Evangeline ” and even “ Hia¬ 
watha.” 

It has been claimed by some that the great ele¬ 
ment which pleases in Longfellow is the Puritan 
spirit, but the poems of Longfellow that are loved 
and recited and sung in England and in this 


9 o 


Reading and the Mind. 


country are those which show the spirit of the 
Catholic faith. 

Here and there he has gone aside to portray 
religion with some little satiric vein, but of this 
Longfellow himself would not have been proud. 
He has not the magic power over language which 
Tennyson possessed, but he has another power 
more difficult of acquirement—impossible to ac¬ 
quire—a power which must come from the inmost 
soul; a quality far more precious, the distinctive 
mark of a true poet—the power to move men’s 
hearts. 

His chief qualities are a gentle soothing power 
to hearts in trouble or not hopeful—a real Catholic 
spirit, with a hold on the unseen but real world, 
as real as the world that we see, a spirit that is 
the basis of true art and a deep soul-moving 
pathos. 

We find his gentleness in “ The Day is Done,” 
“ Resignation,” “ Footsteps of Angels,” “ Light of 
the Stars ; ” his Catholic spirit in “ Evangeline,” 


Longfellow and the Soul. 


9 1 


and his pathos throughout his poems and more 
especially in the dying Minnehaha. 

How intensely human and natural is the pathos 
of Longfellow, and yet how softly mingled with 
the supernatural and divine ! 

Read from some humbler poet, 

Whose songs gushed from his heart, 

As showers from the clouds of Summer, 

Or tears from the eyelids start. 

Such songs have power to quiet 
The restless pulse of care, ^ 

And come like the benediction 
That follows after prayer. 

Then read from the treasured volume 
The poem of thy choice, 

And lend to the rhyme of the poet, 

The beauty of thy voice. 

And the night shall be filled with music, 

And the cares that infest the day, 

Shall fold their tents like the Arabs, 

And as silently steal away. 


Where could we find a more choice poem 


92 


Reading and the Mind. 


or how fill the night with sweeter or sadder 
music than the wail of Hiawatha for his dying 
Minnehaha? 


In the wigwam with Nokomis, 

With those gloomy guests that watched her, 
With the Famine and the Fever, 

She was lying, the Beloved, 

She the dying Minnehaha. 

“ Hark !” she said : “I hear a rushing, 
Hear a roaring and a rushing. 

Hear the falls of Minnehaha 
Calling to me from a distance !” 

“ No, my child ! ” said old Nokomis, 

“ ’Tis the night-wind in the pine trees !” 

“ Look ! ” she said, “ I see my father, 
Standing lonely at his door-way, 

Beckoning to me from his wigwam 
In the land of the Dacotahs ! ” 

“ No, my child !” said old Nokomis, 

“ ’Tis the smoke that waves and beckons i J 
“ Ah ! ” she said, “ the eyes of Pauguk 
Glare upon me in the darkness, 

I can feel his icy fingers 
Clasping mine amid the darkness ! 

Hiawatha ! Hiawatha !” 

And the desolate Hiawatha, 


Longfellow and the Soul. 


93 


Far away amid the forest, 

Miles away among the mountains, 

Heard the sudden cry of anguish. 

Heard the voice of Minnehaha 
Calling to him in the darkness, 

“ Hiawatha ! Hiawatha !” 

Over snow-fields, waste and pathless. 
Under snow-encumbered branches. 
Homeward hurried Hiawatha, 
Empty-handed, heavy-hearted ; 

Heard Nokomis moaning, wailing, 

“ Wahonowin ! Wahonowin ! 

Would that I had perished for you, 
Would that I were dead as you are ! 
Wahonowin ! Wahonowin ! ” 

And he rushed into the wigwam, 

Saw the old Nokomis slowly 
Rocking to and fro and moaning. 

Saw his lovely Minnehaha 
Lying dead and cold before him, 

And his bursting heart within him, 
Uttered such a cry of anguish, 

That the forest moaned and shuddered, 
That the very stars in heaven 
Shook and trembled with his anguish. 

Then he sat down, still and speechless, 
On the bed of Minnehaha, 

At the feet of Laughing Water, 

At those willing feet that never 


94 


Reading and the Mind. 


More would lightly run to meet him, 
Never more would lightly follow. 

With both hands his face he covered. 
Seven long days and nights he sat there. 
As if in a swoon he sat there, 

Speechless, motionless, unconscious 
Of the daylight or the darkness. 

Then they buried Minnehaha ; 

In the snow a grave they made her, 

In the forest deep and darksome, 
Underneath the moaning hemlocks, 
Clothed her in her richest garments, 
Wrapped her in her robes of ermine, 
Covered her with snow like ermine ; 
Thus they buried Minnehaha. 
****** 

“ Farewell !” said he, “ Minnehaha I 
Farewell, O my Laughing Water, 

All my heart is buried with you. 

All my thoughts go onward with you. 
Come not back again to labor. 

Come not back again to suffer, 

Where the Famine and the Fever 
Wear the heart and waste the body. 

Soon my task will be completed, 

Soon your footsteps I shall follow 
To the Islands of the Blessed, 

To the Kingdom of Ponemah, 

To the Land of the Hereafter ! ” 




CHAPTER XII. 


BRYANT AND AMERICAN SCENES. 


y^NOTHER poet there is to whom, apart from 
his hostility to our faith, we could trust our 
minds to be raised to higher literary thought and 
made to look more kindly on nature and man. 
This is William Cullen Bryant. His spirit is that 
of Wordsworth. It was from the reading of 
Wordsworth’s poetry, as he himself tells us, that 
he derived his first inspiration. 

“ Upon opening Wordsworth,” he said, “a thou¬ 
sand springs seemed to gush up at once in my 
heart, and the face of nature, of a sudden, to 
change into a strange freshness and life.” 

Bryant to us has laid open a view of the calm 
beauty of our woods and rivers. The wind and 
the snow seem as dear to him as his own daughters 


g6 Reading and the Mind. 

for whom he has such a devoted love. Like 
another Lear, he taxes not the elements with un¬ 
kindness, but sees them taking forms of minister¬ 
ing spirits, to him more kind even than the “gentle 
breath of heaven.” 

Read his “ Evening Wind,” “ Green River,” 
“ Snowflakes,” “ Crowded Street,” “ Death of the 
Flowers ” and “ Thanatopsis,” and if they will not 
bear a second reading, lay them aside and say there 
is no poetry suggested by American scenery. 


CHAPTER XIII. 


MISCELLANEOUS READING. 

'O UT are these few the only poets one ought 
to read ? Again we repeat, not so. It 
would be limiting the wide range of thought 
spread out before us. But as in our physical ex¬ 
istence a certain substantial nutriment must supply 
the fibre of our being, so must the intellect be 
made strong and robust; then will the lighter 
material not injure the strength and beauty of 
the mind. 

In the broad woodlands of the Muses there is 
much else to be gathered that will delight the ear 
and form the taste. Have we not Goldsmith, Gray, 
Dryden, Pope, Cowper, Keats, Young, Coleridge, 
Poe, Aubrey de Vere? And besides these and 
others, how many clear rills of delicious song! 


9 8 


Reading and the Mind. 

All that one could wish for of fragmentary 
poetry for study, and especially of lyrics, wherein 
the poet loves to pour out the longings of his 
inner soul, may be found in the “ Thousand and 
One Gems ” of Mackay, in Bryant’s “ Library of 
Poetry and Song,” and in Longfellow’s “ Poets 
and Poetry of Europe,” 

How much do we not owe to Longfellow and 
Bryant ? Besides the poet’s sweet songs, Bryant 
gives us his own magnificent translation of Homer 
and his “ Library of Poetry and Song.” Long¬ 
fellow lays at our feet a life-labor, his translation 
of the unseen world of Dante, and the choice 
collection of the poets and poetry of Europe. 

We have reason to be proud of our two Ameri¬ 
can poets, and did we know all that these two 
can teach us, in their collection of poetic thought, 
we should need little else. 

In speaking of reading, there are two depart¬ 
ments which in our day cannot be overlooked, 
and yet to which we can refer only hastily, in 


Miscellaneous Reading. 99 

passing—the reading of periodical literature and 
of novels. 

Of periodical literature, though it is so vast and 
varied, but one word can be said. Amid the one 
hundred and forty-two reviews at present issuing 
from the press we need a guide as in other read¬ 
ing. It would be strangely inconsistent if Cath¬ 
olics were well acquainted with other reviews, 
while of their own—the American Catholic Quar¬ 
terly , the Catholic World , the Dublin Review , and 
The Month —they were to remain comparatively 
uninformed. 

These latter, it may seem, are not as fascinating 
to some readers as other brighter and more pleas¬ 
ant magazines, but they contain what is more 
precious than the entertainment of a leisurely 
half hour—they bring to us in their earnest pages 
thoughts that will be an antidote to a poisonous 
fascination which is strong sometimes even to 
death. 

Of the great question of novel reading what is 


ioo Reading and the Mind. 

to be said? Shall we read novels? There is 
excess on either side. And still novels have their 
place in literature if they are of the right kind. 
Those who would read novels, let them keep to 
the more correct, classical, healthy-toned writers 
—Thackeray, Dickens, and, with a due reserve 
to his prejudices, Scott. 

But how easy to go too far. Some have be¬ 
come absolute slaves of novel reading. It is not 
necessarily wrong to read a good novel occasion¬ 
ally, one that is pure in tone, right-minded in 
principle and religion, and written in a pleasing 
style. “ But,” says Porter, “ it begets passive 
reading, and passive reading weakens the energy 
of the mind. It is a process which wastes time 
and, what is worse, wastes the intellect, the fancy 
and the living soul.” 

It is no credit to appreciate a sensational novel; 
there is in it no healthy action of a cultivated 
intellect; the most uneducated will read it with 
a keen relish. On the other hand, love of 


Miscellaneous Reading. 


IOI 


real literature comes from a trained and refined 
mind. 

What a world of useful and beautiful reading 
there is, without throwing away in so pitiful a 
manner our time and our thought! Read the 
works of Irving, Charles Lamb, of Sir Arthur 
Helps, Dr. J. Brown’s “Spare Hours,” especially 
the charming story of “ Rab and his Friends,” 
and “ Marjorie Fleming.” < 

Is there nothing of interest in the lives of such 
young men as Ozanam, Garcia Moreno; in the 
letters of such women as Eugenie De Guerin, 
Mme. De Sevign£, and in the discoveries of such 
men as Layard, or in histories such as the “ An¬ 
cient Monarchies ” of Rawlinson? 

Parents take great and praiseworthy care of 
the education of their children, but are they fully 
alive to the value of that important factor in it— 
their home reading? 

Take an interest in the reading of those within 
the circle of your influence, direct it, and make 


102 


Reading and the Mind. 


it interesting for them according to their capacities 
and tastes, and they will bless you for it through¬ 
out their lives. 

Why do not young people read what is profit¬ 
able? They are rarely told what is proper, or 
taken in the right way. But nothing is easier to 
a discreet person than to interest a young mind in 
reading, nothing more beautifully docile than that 
mind when properly directed, and nothing, perhaps, 
has so powerful an influence on the formation of 
a young mind and character as its early reading. 

We have attempted to show the necessity of 
reading, and of a choice of authors as our literary 
guides. We have dwelt longer on principles than 
on particular works; the principles will remain 
through life, the book you will read in a day. 

To write of Newman, as the subject deserves, 
would require more than one volume and a life¬ 
time ; and the same may be said of Ruskin. 

Such a work would not be the end of this book. 
It aims only at suggesting, at inspiring with de- 


Miscellaneous Reading . 


103 


sires that may lead young minds to do great deeds 
—deeds to be felt in their own lives and, both 
here and hereafter, make the doers of them loved 
of God and of man. 

We do not deceive ourselves by imagining that 
all will immediately admire the authors that have 
been proposed. Each one has his own tastes, and 
tastes differ, and it is right that they should, or 
there would be little reason for the variety that we 
have in our authors. 

There is a grand meaning, if rightly understood, 
in these bold words of Festus: 

All rests with those who read. A word or thought 
Is what each makes it to himself, and may 
Be full of great dark meanings like the sea, 

With shoals of life rushing, or like the air 
(Benighted with the wing of the wild dove), 

Sweeping miles broad o’er the far Southwestern woods 
With mighty glimpses of the celestial light— 

Or may be nothing — bodiless —spiritless. 

We would not say all rests with those who read, 
but much , for something rests with the writer. 


104 


Reading and the Mind. 


What pleases one is what one enjoys, and not 
what profits or pleases his neighbor. But still 
there remains the principle that great and noble 
minds will teach great and noble thought. The 
authors we have mentioned may not at first seem 
attractive to some; but make a trial of them 
and they will grow dearer as they are known 
better. 

We feel assured of one fact, that those who 
read Homer and Dante; in prose, Newman and 
Ruskin; in poetry, Longfellow, Wordsworth and 
Bryant, will form for themselves a higher taste, be 
better able to guide themselves with truth and 
judgment, with higher intellectual enjoyment, and 
in a shorter time than could be done outside of 
such a course of reading. 

Such reading is not as amusing as reading 
merely for pastime, but it shapes the intellects 
of men of thought. And we have been consid¬ 
ering not how to kill time, but how to improve 
our mind; and serious men in our day believe 


Miscellaneous Reading. 


105 


they are called upon to do something more by 
reading than merely to while away an hour of 
idleness. “ Not to be whiled away in aimless 
dreams life and its choicest faculties were given.” 

The future of a life may be made or marred by 
the nature and method of its reading. Catholics 
are well aware, or should be, that in the strife of 
intellect which is going on their adversaries sleep 
not, and so should they be spurred on to be ever 
ready to meet them with equal arms on the field 
of intellect, for in the realms of faith we pos¬ 
sess a treasure of which, unless we ourselves will 
it, we cannot be robbed, but in the field of 
letters much remains to be done. 

In the following collection are suggested certain 
authors that may lead young minds on the way to 
a wider and more learned course of reading. Let 
it be remembered that many well-known books 
and well-deserving authors may not be mentioned, 
but the difficulty consisted, chiefly, in making the 


o6 


Reading and the Mind. 


collection brief. Those who have mastered these 
authors will be easily inspired to take a loftier 
flight, without further assistance than their own 
well-formed taste. May it be to many the key to 
such a treasure. 


CHAPTER XIV. 


LYRIC POETRY. 


T)OETRY might have been called the “waving 
of an angel’s wing in the sunlight of fancy; ” 
or “ a ray from a star broken by the pulsations of 
the midnight ocean.” It is a thing to be dreamed, 
not reasoned. It is to be looked for in the region, 
not of fact, but of fiction ; and the faculty that 
gives it form is not reason, but the imagination. 

Some have called it “ the imitation of Nature in 
measured language;” “a fine art, operating by 
means of thought and language ; ” but all these 
definitions seem but to fetter the free wings of a 
muse, never destined to be confined even in a 
golden cage. 

Yet some expression is needed to give an idea of 
those things concerning which poetry must pour 


io8 


Reading and the Mind. 


forth its melodies. It is intensely human, most 
emotional; for this reason it touches man, not 
only on one side of his nature, but in all the ful¬ 
ness of his being, natural and supernatural. 

It is not opposed to truth, but idealizes it; not 
apart from beauty, but living in it; not averse to 
God, but ever yearning for him, and raising man 
towards him from the very nature of poetry and 
the nature of the human soul. 

Hence it has been said that “ poetry is a plant 
which has its root in truth and springs up and 
blossoms into beauty.” If to this we add the 
presence of some ennobling thought, we have a 
definition of the highest kind of poetry, that of 
the good, the true and the beautiful. 

But, perhaps, a more specific definition would 
not be amiss. It may be described, then, as “ the 
impassioned portrayal in rhythmical language of 
the relations which exist between nature, man 
and God, and of the thoughts which arise from 
such relations.” 


Lyric Poetry . 


109 


Man’s emotional being, when its pulse is true, 
goes out to nature, and at the same time soars 
heavenward. Without this triple chord, man, 
nature and God, the harmony is incomplete ; not 
that explicit reference is always needed, but the 
voice of nature, when striking against the heart 
of man, must ever be able to call forth the echo 
of the Eternal. 

One of the great classes of poetry is that which 
has been called “ Lyric.” It is an enthusiastic 
utterance of passion aided by fancy and the 
imagination. It is the means by which we give 
expression to our most intimate relations with 
God, our country and our friends. 

It is, moreover, the form of poetry which ap¬ 
pears earliest in the literature of a nation, being 
the animated expression of the overflowing human 
heart. 

Hazlitt says: “ Lyrical poetry, of all others, 
bears the nearest resemblance to painting. It 
deals in hieroglyphics and passing figures, which 


i io Reading and the Mind. 

depend for effect, not on the working out, but on 
the selection. It is the dance and pantomime of 
poetry.” 

To be a true lyric and characterized by those 
marks which distinguish all real poetry and form 
the chief delight of this style of writing, the 
poem should, first of all, have real artistic beauty ; 
that is to say, it ought to give rise in the mind 
to some ennobling thought. 

To do this it must needs be founded on truth 
and reality, but this alone is not sufficient for 
true beauty or even true poetry ; for the presence 
of the imagination, although only a subordinate 
element, is necessary for either of these. 

Professor Hales, speaking of hymn writing, 
says: “ At all events, the imagination has an in¬ 
ferior part assigned her; she is not to create, but 
rather to decorate and glorify what is created.” 

He also says: “To worship, and adore, and 
love—these are real movements and impulses of 
the poet’s mind, and may have, and have had, 


Lyric Poetry . 


111 

their expression in lyrics that may be fully styled 
Divine.” 

From what has been said here on lyric poetry, 
two things especially must be noted : First, the 
author expresses the feelings of his own heart; 
in other words, a lyrical poem is intensely per¬ 
sonal. Secondly, he expresses the intensity of his 
feelings; that is, a lyric poem has in it an unusual 
degree of passion and enthusiasm. 

For this reason, then, the lyric is always quite 
short. It must, therefore, portray in a much 
more intense and excited manner than would be 
adopted in either epic or dramatic poetry that 
feeling which is so condensed and concentrated 
by the brevity of the account. 

Lyric poetry need not, as its name would seem 
to signify, be intended for music. It is true, 
Aristotle himself says, that the epic form of 
poetry imitates by means of words alone, and the 
dramatic imitates by means of words accompa¬ 
nied by action, while the lyric imitates by means 


Reading and the Mind. 


112 

of words accompanied by music. Hence we 
see that it was originally designed for musical 
accompaniment. And yet all connection with 
music may be severed and the name remain the 
same. 

And what name could be more appropriate ? 
For, since the lyre has always been considered 
typical of music, no name could be more appro¬ 
priately given to this form of poetry. It is song 
in its very nature and essence. And in every 
good lyric there exists such a real musical sweet¬ 
ness and massive grandeur as to immediately cap¬ 
tivate the soul of the hearer, even as the delicious 
strains of the lyre itself. 

One of the distinctions given between lyric and 
epic poetry is that the epic is objective ; that is, 
the author is entirely forgetful of self and lives 
only in his characters and creations. The lyric, 
on the other hand, is essentially subjective ; that 
is, the poet, forgetful of everything else, dwells 
mainly on self, and pours forth the joys and 


Lyric Poetry. 


1 13 

sorrows of his own soul, in an attempt to gain 
over the sympathies and affections of his hearers. 

“ He is the true lyric poet,” says Ulrici, the 
German critic, “ who portrays not merely his own 
personal feeling subjectively, but that of the 
human mind generally, of which his own is but a 
particular manifestation.” 

As the epic relates the deeds of the past, and 
conjures up the mighty events of that period, so 
the lyric forgets the past and thinks only of the 
present and future—looks at the present with joy 
or sorrow, anticipates the future with hope or 
fear. In other words, epic poetry is commem¬ 
orative ; lyrical, prophetic. 

There are very few persons who pretend to 
have any regard for poetry—who are moved by 
fine sensibilities, keen perceptions—who have any 
love of the true and beautiful—but may find their 
element in lyric poetry. For this is the poetry 
of the heart. 

Founded on truth and harmony, holding innate 

8 


114 Reading and the Mind. 

all the higher and sublime tendencies of the 
human heart, having for its object the elevation 
of the human soul by means of those very senses 
and emotions which are too often perverted from 
their original use, lyric poetry comes to us as a 
regenerating and purifying element for the rep¬ 
resentation of the divinest thoughts to which the 
human mind can soar. 


CHAPTER XV. 


DRAMATIC POETRY. 


"j^RAMATIC poetry is essentially the poetry 
of action. The purpose of the dramatic 
author is to represent in the actions of his char¬ 
acters his own thoughts, while concealing his own 
personality. In this veiling of personal feelings 
lies one of the chief distinctions between dramatic 
and lyric poetry. 

The history of the origin and early progress 
of the drama, because of the wildness and weird¬ 
ness of the circumstances under which the first 
dramatic performances were produced, is particu¬ 
larly interesting. 

Let us imagine ourselves in one of the Grecian 
towns, about five hundred years before the birth 
of Christ, on the occasion of the great Bacchana¬ 
lian festival. 


116 Reading and the Mind. 

The women and children are decked in holi¬ 
day attire, while, strange to behold, the men, at 
least those who are young and active, are clothed 
from head to foot in goat-skins. All are flock¬ 
ing to a rude, rustic altar of wood or turf, 
before which a portion of the greensward is 
marked off by stakes. 

Early in the day the celebration begins. An 
important character, who represents Bacchus him¬ 
self, enters the enclosed space and relates some 
extraordinary feat or adventure of the god. 

It was the belief of these ancient Greeks that 
Bacchus was accompanied in his expeditions 
through the woods by an attendant band of 
jovial satyrs, creatures with horned, human heads 
and with body and limbs of a goat. 

When, therefore, the narrator has finished, the 
above-mentioned fantastically clad inhabitants, 
impersonating the satyrs, shout and dance 
around the altar, singing the praises of the god¬ 
ly hero 


Dramatic Poetry. 


7 


The leader again resumes his story, followed 
in turn by the chorus, until the narrative is 
concluded, and the songs of praise entirely 
exhausted. Then follows a scene of wild hilarity. 

For a considerable length of time the satyrs, 
already half-crazed with wine and excitement, 
keep up among themselves a wild, disorderly 
dance, and with the spectators a running fire 
of ready wit and good-natured bantering. After 
this he who is deemed most ready of tongue 
and active of limb receives the prize of a goat. 
Thus the festival concludes. 

Such, according to universal admission, was 
the origin of the Greek drama, which afterwards 
attained such perfection. In the wild scene just 
described we see little of a dramatic nature, 
yet the progress from this rude beginning was 
rapid. 

Thespis, a native of Icaria, introduced one 
actor, and Aeschylus, styled “the Father of 
Tragedy,” not long after introduced a second, 


118 Reading and the Mind. 

both distinct from the chorus. In this way 
the chorus, from being the more important part 
of the entertainment, soon fell into a position 
subordinate to the dialogue. 

By the year 500 dramatic art had advanced 
so far and become so exceedingly popular that 
the famous theatre of Dionisos (another name 
for Bacchus) was begun. Here the masterpieces 
of vEschylus, Sophocles and Euripides were first 
produced. 

^Eschylus, in point of time ‘the first of these 
three great contemporaries, was a soldier as well 
as a poet, and obtained at the battle of Mara¬ 
thon a prize for preeminent bravery. He was 
the first to give life, splendor and divinity to 
the drama. His compositions are characterized 
by simplicity, harmony and sublimity. 

Sophocles, thirty years his junior, and, accord¬ 
ing to the opinion of the Greeks themselves, the 
greatest tragic author, excelled in the delineation 
of human nature. Many of his characters are 


Dramatic Poetry. 


19 


noble and self-sacrificing, and invested with great 
depth of feeling. An astonishing simplicity is 
remarkable in all his plays. 

Euripides loves to depict scenes of misery and 
suffering, and succeeds, by eloquent discourse and 
the introduction of startling features, in touching 
the brain rather than the heart. These peculiar¬ 
ities make it more interesting to read an English 
translation of Euripides than of either of the 
others. 

The next division of Drama, which is Comedy, 
now presents itself. Its progress also was rapid. 
Rising with Susarion, an itinerant mountebank, 
improved by Phormes, Epicharmus and Cratinus, 
it reached its most perfect state about the same 
time as tragedy under the keen mind of Aris¬ 
tophanes. 

The productions of this great writer, though 
regarded by many as a series of wholesale and 
unlicensed abuses, are admitted by the best 
critics to exhibit a course of systematic jesting 


120 


Reading and the Mind. 


and discriminating abuse, and to contain many 
wholesome truths, evincing acute observation and 
intimate acquaintance with human character. 

The history of the Greek drama from this 
period comprises little more than a list of tragic 
and comic poets, whose names might be given 
in chronological order. But few of the works 
produced by these men are extant, and of them¬ 
selves little is known. 

It is difficult for most of us, who at the word 
“theatre” are accustomed to think of that large 
beautifully gilded, brilliantly lighted hall with 
which we are familiar, to conceive an idea of the 
Greek theatre. This was a magnificent stone 
structure capable of holding, without difficulty, 
more than twenty thousand persons. 

Though a huge awning was at times used 
as a protection from the sun’s heat, there was 
usually no other canopy than the blue sky. 
The salubrity of the climate was a reason for 
this, while another was because the idea of en- 


Dramatic Poetry. 


I 2 I 


closing their gods and heroes in a confined space 
was most repugnant to the Greeks. 

The performances were witnessed in broad day¬ 
light ; frequently there were two or three on the 
same day, while on the other'hand a single per¬ 
formance sometimes lasted several days. The 
audience was acquainted with the main features 
of the story to be represented, and, regarding the 
whole as intimately connected with their reli¬ 
gious worship, was intensely interested, and, at 
the exciting stages, profoundly moved. 

It is related, that upon the appearance, through 
ingenious mechanical intervention, of gigantic 
monsters and tremendous deities, all were para¬ 
lyzed with terror; men were wont to tremble, 
women to faint, and children were known to 
have actually perished with fright. 

We may now' consider the progress of the drama 
among the Romans, who were not of a dramatic 
turn. Their earliest rude ideas of the art and 
even their word for actor, histrio, were derived 


122 


Reading and the Mind. 


from the Etruscans; their farces, or fabulce atel- 
lance, from the Oscans. The more elevated pro¬ 
ductions of Terence, Plautus, Andronicus and 
others were based upon Greek models. The 
dramas of Seneca', though frequently bombas¬ 
tic, contain passages of beauty, and are interest¬ 
ing as the most complete Latin tragedies extant. 

For fourteen centuries after the death of Sen¬ 
eca, the dramatic art was neglected. Italy was 
the scene of its revival. In most European coun¬ 
tries the miracle plays of the Middle Ages directly 
preceded and were the foundation of the modern 
drama. 

In Italy, however, there was simply a revival 
of the old Latin plays. At first they were written 
in Latin by Mussato and Petrarch, and afterwards 
in Italian by Ariosto and Macchiavelli. 

The Spanish, French and German drama was 
the outcome of the miracle plays. In the first- 
mentioned nation there was considerable early 
progress, the plays being conspicuous for intricacy 


Dramatic Poetry. 123 

of plot and marked prevalence of patriotic and 
religious fervor. 

The principal Spanish dramatists were Lope de 
Vega and Calderon de la Barca. 

In Germany, somehow or other, stage repre¬ 
sentations have never been very popular, and first- 
class German dramatists have been few in num¬ 
ber. The most prominent names are Goethe, 
Lessing and Schiller. 

The French, on the contrary, are lovers of the 
theatre, and by them the drama has been more 
extensively cultivated and with greater success 
than in either of the above-mentioned countries. 
Before the shining literary period of Louis XIV. 
the rather inferior plays were based upon Greek 
tragedies or upon those of Seneca, and bear a 
closer resemblance in execution to the latter. 

The four great dramatists of the French stage 
are Corneille, Racine, Molikre and Voltaire. 
Corneille drew upon the Spanish as well as 
upon the Greek theatre. The former had great 


24 


Reading and the Mind. 


influence upon his mind, and from it he obtained 
the materials for the first great tragedy, “ The 
Cid.” He composed many other plays, all con¬ 
spicuous for sublimity and neatness of style, 
unnatural complication of plot and complete 
absence of humor. 

Of all the French tragedians, Racine is, perhaps, 
the greatest. He was certainly best acquainted 
with the ancients. His characters were not studies 
from life; they were creatures of his imagination, 
frequently possessing enough valor, perseverance 
or faithfulness to suffer for a half dozen ordinary 
mortals. Most of his plays contain one character 
animated by one dominant passion, which it is 
the delight of the author to follow out to a 
climax. “ Andromaque ” and “ Athalie ” are two 
of his best works. 

Both these authors recognized the excellence of 
the old Greek tragedy, but it is doubtful whether, 
in their digression from the rules of Aristotle, 
they succeeded in improving upon it. 


Dramatic Poetry . 


125 


Great credit is due Moliere, the father of French 
comedy. As Shakespeare found the English com¬ 
edy, so he found the French, an unorganized sys¬ 
tem of buffoonery and uproarious farce. This he per¬ 
fected and moulded into a noble and enduring art. 

Moliere borrowed extensively from Plautus and 
Terence, but by additions which were the out¬ 
come of his own originally humorous nature, he 
improved whatever he appropriated. Most of 
his works are replete with laughable puns, show- 
ing great ingenuity. “ Tartufe ” and “ L’Avare ” 
may be cited. 

Voltaire made many innovations in the me¬ 
chanical part of the French stage; he wrote 
both tragedies and comedies. “ CEdipe ” was the 
first and best known of these. 

The more modern French dramatists are rather 
immoral in their writings, especially Victor Hugo 
and Dumas, while the current dramatic literature 
of anonymous or not well-known writers is pro¬ 
verbially lax and licentious. 


126 Reading and the Mind. 

We now come to the English drama, with 
which nothing is more closely connected than 
the name of Shakespeare. Before his time the 
dramatic art in England was almost entirely 
neglected. 

The genius of Shakespeare was wonderful ; he 
composed excellent comedies and perfect trage¬ 
dies. His characters were taken from life ; he 
was alike acquainted with the elegant language 
of the court and the familiar talk of the tavern. 

He was the idol of his contemporaries, is the 
pride of succeeding generations of his country¬ 
men, and the delight of all who are able to read 
and understand his productions. His reputation 
for a brief space immediately after his death was 
obscured by a dark cloud of ignorance and prej¬ 
udice, and again during the reign of Charles 
II.; but it was only to shine forth anew at the 
beginning of the last century with more than 
original lustre. 

His fame since then has been steadily increas- 


Dramatic Poetry. 


2 7 


ing. He has left, altogether, thirty-seven plays, 
twelve comedies, eleven historical plays and four¬ 
teen tragedies, all of the highest order. 

The other eminent English dramatists, with the 
exception of Marlowe and Jonson, were comic 
writers. Most of these, especially the earliest, 
were also extremely immoral. Congreve was the 
first who was successful. 

Spirited, humorous comedies were produced in 
the eighteenth century by Sheridan and Gold¬ 
smith, many of which are still popular. 

Among the recent poets who have adopted the 
dramatic form are Swinburne, Tennyson and 
Browning. 


CHAPTER XVI. 


DIALOGUE AND SOLILOQUY OF TRAGEDY. 

HE origin of dialogue, like the origin of 



tragedy, was very simple. The dialogue, 
was for a long time confined to two speakers, and 
although tragedy originated with a chorus, noth¬ 
ing could be more unnatural for the purpose of 
tragedy, namely, to represent action. Thespis, by 
adding one actor to the chorus, made the first step 
towards the ideal. 

It is to Aeschylus, however, that we owe the 
invention of a real dialogue distinct from the 
chorus, for he introduced two actors who besides 
the chorus took part in the dialogue. 

The Greek mind immediately showed its ap" 
preciation of the merit of the dialogue by their 
approval of the efforts of ALschylus and Sopho- 


Dialogue and Soliloquy of Tragedy. 129 

cles; and it is not to be wondered at, for in 
dialogue even when not important there is an 
interest far above narrative, however well de¬ 
livered. Notice how in novels readers skip 
narrative or description, and hurry on to the 
dialogue. 

Dialogue in any form is attractive. Who that 
has read the dialogues of Plato does not admire 
them, as well as the wisdom of our modern writer 
of dialogues, Sir Arthur Helps? Yet these works 
are not adapted to the stage; theirs is a dialogue 
more tranquil yet to thoughtful people filled with 
pleasure and interest. 

The drama without dialogue would be a most 
lifeless performance; and how great this depend¬ 
ence of the drama upon dialogue is one has but 
to think in order to see. The drama depends on 
action, and all action of the play depends upon 
the dialogue. For this reason dialogue is of the 
highest value to tragedy. 

The movement of the drama is not due to the 
9 


30 


Reading and the Mind. 


presence of one person solely, except where that 
one acts in connection with others. If it be not 
in companionship with others, it must be in the 
effect of the act. Hence the necessity of more 
than one character. As it is seldom, however, 
that there occurs between two an action of such 
importance as to sustain dramatic movement, the 
number of actors has been largely increased by 
English dramatists. 

The principal characters of the action may be 
few, but these involve other characters, and, in 
consequence, a greater need of dialogue follows. 
Drama, in fine, puts before us a miniature world, 
where the people go through a portion of their 
lives before us, whence comes dramatic action and 
its most natural means of expression —dialogue. 

As ^Eschylus receives his meed of praise for his 
improvement on Thespis, so Sophocles is given 
honor for the step he takes in advance of ^Eschy- 
lus. The extra actors and enrichment of the 
dialogue are really the improvement for which 


Dialogue and Soliloquy of Tragedy. 131 • 

Sophocles deserves our thanks. For it is by 
these, vve may say, he nearly reached perfection 
in his art. 

The action of ALschylus often comes to a stand¬ 
still, and this is the more evident when the chorus 
is extended. On the other hand, Sophocles, by 
limiting the chorus, increased the dialogue and 
rendered the action more prominent, the interest 
more lively and the whole more symmetrical. 

As the dialogue became more used by tragic 
poets, in proportion the chorus fell into a sub¬ 
ordinate part. That which once was the whole 
became a part, and merely one cf the actors co¬ 
operating in the action. Thus, says Aristotle, 
was it used by Sophocles. 

In the modern drama the chorus holds no 
place. The songs that are introduced hardly re¬ 
semble the function of the chorus. The dialogue 
so well fills up the measure of requirements that 
no chorus is needed. 

By the greatest dramatists, however, a want 


132 


Reading and the Mind. 


was felt, which formerly had been partly filled 
by the chorus. This office was quickly refilled 
by the invention of the soliloquy. The principal 
actors in the play were the mouthpieces of the 
soliloquy. The time of its delivery was nearly 
the same as that formerly occupied by the chorus, 
and the occasion nearly similar, namely, the end 
of a scene or act. 

In so much as the soliloquy connects the scenes 
or acts, helps out the work and denouement of 
the tragedy, it is like the chorus ; but it does 
more, for by it dramatists give us an insight 
into the characters, minds and thoughts, and thus 
base upon its utterances much of the after-work¬ 
ing of the play. 

It is not pretended that the soliloquy was in¬ 
serted for this precise purpose, but such in reality 
is its function. Like the chorus, it often contains 
some of the sublimest poetry of the drama, as well 
as the deepest reasonings upon the problems and 
duties of life. 


Dialogue and Soliloquy of Tragedy. 


33 


The dramas of Shakespeare are famous for the 
soliloquies ; the soliloquies of Macbeth, of Ham¬ 
let, of Wolsey in “ Henry VIII.,” and the solilo¬ 
quy of Richard III., are among the best known. 

Dialogue and soliloquy are now the forms of 
English tragedy ; they have been found to be the 
best means of unravelling the plot. 

Nothing can be more natural or effective than 
dialogue. Two or more characters are introduced 
conversing, and the thread of their dialogue is 
so managed, and is taken up at such a point, that 
it acts in regard to past, present and future. 

As in “ Hamlet,” all familiar with it remember 
that the first scene tells of what has happened, 
recounts what is present and presages the future. 

In the mean time, the drama is continually pro¬ 
gressing; we are carried along on a swift current 
of life by “a nurse of fire,” whose chief instru¬ 
ment, the dialogue, the poet puts in the mouths 
of the dramatis personas . 

What a difference in artistic reality and beauty 


134 


Reading and the Mind. 


is to be found between dialogue and mere epi¬ 
sodic narrative in action ! This may be seen 
by comparing the opening scene of “ Hamlet ” 
with the commencement of the “ Agamemnon ” 
of Aeschylus. 

“Agamemnon” is opened by a character called 
the “ Watchman,” stationed on a tower. He goes 
through a long recitative stating matters in regard 
to the State, and why he is on guard. This fur¬ 
nishes a sufficient opening for what follows in the 
drama ; but it seems a weak beginning when com¬ 
pared with Shakespeare’s opening of “ Hamlet,” 
where all the circumstances are the same. The 
one is dull and very wearisome, the other is viva¬ 
cious and even soul-stirring. 

Such is the effect of dialogue; by it tragedy 
arouses our most lofty passions and tenderest 
emotions, and touches the sweetest affections of 
heart and soul. 


CHAPTER XVIL 


HUMOR IN TRAGEDY. 



T'VERY one knows what humor is; at least 


they can tell when they are in good humor 
and when they are not. Eike many other good 
things of life, humor is more easy to recognize 
than to describe. What is humor? “Ay! tell 
me that.”—“Marry, now, I can tell.” — “ To’t.” 
—“ Mass, I cannot tell.” 

Humor, is it not the faculty of seeing or 
placing something in a light that associates it 
with a ludicrous or ridiculous idea ? The tend¬ 
ency to laugh is caused by the surprise at seeing 
the two ideas brought into sudden contact, or 
by the incongruity of the two being together at 


all. 


Humor has been employed by dramatists and 


136 Reading and the Mind. 

comic writers in order to hold up to ridicule 
certain classes of characters. Even so serious a 
writer as Homer shows no slight sense of humor 
in his picture of the ludicrous Thersites, when, 
after abusing the chief and crouching under the 
welt raised by the golden sceptre, “ he wipes 
away a tear.” 

Aristophanes, the master comedy writer of 
Greece, laughed at the actions of all men, and 
could find even in the person of Socrates a 
source of humor for his “ Clouds.” 

If we look into Shakespeare, we shall find there 
is not one of his plays in which his humor is 
not perceptible. In some parts he gives it open 
play ; in others it seems to bubble up by stealth, 
under the veil of some grave exterior. Now it is 
the heavy, blunt witticism of the fool or the 
clown, and again, the thin vein of sarcasm and 
withering humor of one whose mind usually 
courses along far different channels. 

This is particularly the case with Hamlet. 


Humor in Tragedy. 


37 


After the “ harrowing tale unfolded ” by the 
Ghost, Hamlet’s soul begets a hatred bitter 
as wormwood for men ; but, to further his own 
ends, he hides his hatred under a jocular tone. 
He is himself only when alone, or in company 
with the Queen, his mother. At other times he 
banters Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, cajoles 
old Polonius, against whom lie holds a bitter 
spite, calling him such endearing names as “ fish¬ 
monger,” “ old Jephtha,” and fooling him “to 
the top of his bent.” 

But with the exception of Mercutio, “ whose 
very sighs,” as Hudson says, “ wreathe themselves 
into jokes,” there is probably no scene so full of 
rich humor as that of the grave-diggers in 
“ Hamlet.” It seems the last place in the world, 
or at the edge of it, for a joke, and yet here 
the master of tragedy puts into the mouths of 
the grave-makers the most laughable solutions 
to conundrums, and the most atrocious puns. 

Hamlet, the courtier, scholar, soldier, whose 


138 Reading and the Mind. 

pointed instrument of sarcasm is so keen that it 
needs but to touch to pierce; and the grave¬ 
digger, an unschooled peasant, but one who bodes 
no good to the one who may be unfortunate 
enough to feel the blunt edge of his frank, open 
humor, have an encounter. Retort follows retort; 
pun, pun ; and quibble answers to quibble—until 
finally ’tis Hamlet is forced to say, “ How absolute 
the knave is,” and soon withdraws from the war 
of words. The gentleman and scholar yields to 
the boor and peasant. 

This is not by any means his only vein of 
humor; in the delightful Gobbo, in Touchstone, 
in Malvolio, Olivia and the Duke, in the speech 
of the Porter at the “ knocking at the doer ” in 
“ Macbeth,” made so famous by De Quincey’s 
pen and challenged as an interpolation by Col¬ 
eridge, the keen, rich humor of the master is 
ever rolling out. 

The grave-scene of “ Hamlet,” however, seems 
to have claimed his especial attention. Some one 


Humor in Tragedy. 


139 


may ask why Shakespeare introduced the scene 
at all. He has raised us to a pitch of excitement, 
wonder and anxiety for the fate of Hamlet, and 
while the mind is busy with this solemn thought 
he brings in his grave-diggers, who chase far 
away all thought of tragedy. 

To this the answer is easy. Shakespeare, no 
doubt, knew the strength of our own minds 
better than we who read him ; he knew that he 
had so taxed our energies that some unbending 
under such a strain would be a wise relief, if not 
a necessity. 

It is the old story of the bow and the string. 
Besides, these grave-diggers serve another end, by 
introducing gently the tidings of Ophelia’s death 
and the manner of it. It is preliminary to what 
follows—the burial of Ophelia and the meeting 
of Laertes and Hamlet. In this scene both the 
master and his penetrative knowledge of human 
nature are discerned. Taking the scene even 
apart from its bearing in the tragedy, ’tis a 


140 


Reading aiid the Mind. 


pleasure to see how Shakespeare, without any 
apparent effort, could descend from the character 
of Hamlet to that of a clown, and yet present 
both with such ease and truth. 

It would seem that some would wish to banish 
from our literature, and consequently from our 
life, this pleasantry and humor. It is impossible. 
Addison said that “ nature and humor ” could not 
be apart, that “ life was the source and spring of 
humor.” 

Humor to our daily life is what salt is to what 
we eat. Salt is not the principal article, but 
an indispensable accompaniment of the principal 
articles: so humor, though it be by no means 
the uppermost idea of our lives, has still its place, 
and if it must have a place in life it must also 
have a place in our literature, for this is but the 
written experience of our life. 


CHAPTER XVIII. 


HOW TO WRITE A TRAGEDY. 

HERE is a question upon which two of the 



greatest intellects the world has ever known 
have expressed their opinions. The question is 
this: In the writing of a tragedy, should the 
poet start with a carefully planned and compli¬ 
cated plot ; or should he, free as the flight of a 
lark, soar upward without the hampering details 
of an elaborate plan, and allow his characters to 
develop the plot under the unfailing impulses 
of inspiration and genius? Aristotle inclines to 
the former of the two methods, Cardinal New¬ 
man to the latter: 

Aristotle, regarding the plot as the most im¬ 
portant part in the tragedy, draws up certain 
regulations for making it as perfect as possible. 


42 


Reading and the Mind. 


“ Tragedy,” he tells us, “ being the imitation of 
nature by action, has for its end the arousing of 
the passions of pity and fear in such a way as 
to purify them,” by directing their exercise to 
appropriate objects in a suitable manner. 

Now, to excite this pity and fear the poet 
ought not to place before the spectators, as the 
hero of his poem, a man who is eminent for his 
justice and virtue, nor one reduced to misery by 
his own wickedness and villainy, but rather a 
personage of high reputation and prosperity, 
who by some imprudence or some mischance, 
though not by conscious crime, has been brought 
into a state of wretchedness and woe. 

If a person of high virtue and just character 
were to be made miserable without any cause it 
would excite in the spectators, not pity, but indig¬ 
nation. If a villain were represented as unhappy, 
it would arouse no feeling of compassion, but 
contempt and a sense of satisfied justice that he 
has been treated as he deserved. 


How to Write a Tragedy. 


143 


Aristotle here shows what may be attempted, * 
and what ought to be avoided, in the delineation 
of characters. He then declares that the plot, 
or fable, as he calls it, is perfect when the change 
takes place from a state of happiness to a state 
of misery, and when it is founded on some terrible 
deed or suffering that has taken place with refer¬ 
ence to an illustrious family. 

Thus on the most scientific principles Aristotle 
has erected a lofty framework for tragedy, to be 
filled up by the working of the poet’s mind. 

Cardinal Newman ventures to think that it is 
precisely here that the wonderful analytical power 
of the great mind of Aristotle, so marvellous in 
reducing its thoughts to system, has led him 
astray with regard to tragic poetry. 

Viewing tragedy as it has been actually writ¬ 
ten by Grecian poets, he claims that Aristotle 
gives rules for what a perfect tragedy might be, 
but not for what it is. His ideas do not corre¬ 
spond with what has been done by the most 


144 


Reading and the Mind. 

successful writers of Greek tragedy ; and this is 
evident from an analysis of their plays. 

The plot, as it appears in most of these ancient 
plays, is a subordinate element, serving only as 
the means of introducing the several personages. 
The interest of most of these plays lies, he 
finds, not in the interest of the plot, but in the 
charm of the characters, in the sentiments and 
the poetic diction ; and in these the actual merit 
and poetry of the productions are found. 

In support of his view, he shows that in most 
of the works of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Eurip¬ 
ides, with one or two exceptions—as, for in¬ 
stance, the “ CEdipus Tyrannus ”—the plots are of 
little importance and may be said to scarcely 
exist. He illustrates this statement by pointing 
out that “neither in the ‘ CEdipus Coloneus ’ nor 
in the ‘ Philo.ctetes,’ two of the most beautiful 
plays of Sophocles, is the plot striking; but how 
exquisite is the delineation of the characters of 
Antigone and CEdipus in the former tragedy, 


How to Write a Tragedy. 145 

particularly their interview with Polynices, and 
the various descriptions of the scene itself, which 
the chorus furnishes.” 

Now, the conclusion which Newman draws from 
these facts is that the Greek drama was “ modelled 
on no scientific principle. It was a pure recrea¬ 
tion of the imagination, revelling without object 
©r meaning beyond its own exhibition.” 

It is rich in harmonious language, and filled 
with the “ voices of sorrow, joy, compassion or 
religious emotion.” Its characters come and go 
almost without any apparent reason. 

Noting all this, and granting that one or two 
celebrated dramas answer the requisitions of Aris¬ 
totle, Newman goes still further and questions the 
sufficiency, even, of the rules of Aristotle for the 
production of a drama of the highest order. His 
reasons for questioning the sufficiency of rules 
which require a complicated fable are based on 
the very nature of poetry, which longs to soar 
and idealize at will the characters of a play. 


10 


146 Reading and the Mind. 

These rules would clog the wings of genius and 
drag it repeatedly to earth. This constant .atten¬ 
tion to minute details and the ins and outs of a 
complex story, to be rigidly followed out to a 
predetermined end, would tend to check a lofty 
flight. 

Thus the mind of the poet is withdrawn from 
the spontaneous exhibition of pathos and imagina¬ 
tion, which form the soul of the poem, and its 
energy is exhausted by the invention of a com¬ 
plex plot. 

Newman seeks to confirm his view modestly, 
with all due deference to, and recognition of, 
the great intellect of Aristotle, but at the same 
time with the firm tone of a mind that thinks 
tor itself, recognizes the truth and is prepared 
to sustain it with reasons. He shows that the 
“ CEdipus Tyrannus,” although one of the near¬ 
est resemblances to Aristotle’s system of tragedy, 
though wonderfully remarkable for its complexity 
of plot, is in other points deficient in poetical 


How to Write a Tragedy. 


147 


treatment ; while on the other hand the two 
dramas, the “ Agamemnon ” of Aeschylus and 
the “ Bacch;e” of Euripides, possess great poetical 
power, and yet are deficient in skilful manage¬ 
ment of the plot. Are they, he asks, on this 
account, as poetry, to be rated below the 
“ CEdipus ” ? 

Ingenious workmanship, then, in the construc¬ 
tion of the plot, is Aristotle’s ideal of dramatic 
composition. The delineation of perfect or 
charming character, grouping, magnificent thought 
in poetic language, pathos and the full free swing 
of the poet’s soul through the world of fancy, 
in a plot that is the spontaneous development 
of the actions of such characters, seem to be 
Cardinal Newman’s ideal of tragedy. 

With Shakespeare as our model, let those who 
have studied and analyzed him decide, for modern 
tragedy, which of these two ideals measures 
best his methods, approaches nearer to nature, 
and is suited to be our guide. 



SOMETHING TO READ. 



SOMETHING TO READ 


PART I. 

LITERATURE OF TIME. 

Dreams, books, are each a world ; and books,, we know, 

Are a substantial world both pure and good ; 

Round these, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood. 

Our pastimes and our happiness will grow.— Wordsworth. 

a man a taste for reading, and the 
means of gratifying it, and you can hardly 
fail of making a happy man, unless, indeed, you 
put into his hand a most perverse selection of 
books. You place him in contact with the best 
society in every period in history, with the wisest, 
the wittiest, the tenderest, the bravest, and the 



52 


Something to Read. 


purest characters who have adorned humanity. 
You make him a denizen of all countries, a con¬ 
temporary of all ages .”—Sir J. Hcrschel. 

“ Employ your time in improving yourself by 
other men’s documents; so shall you come easily 
by what others have labored hard for.”— Socrates. 

“ If you read Homer, Plato, Atschylus, Herod¬ 
otus, Dante, Shakespeare and Spenser, as much as 
you ought, you will not require wide enlargement 
of shelves to right and left of them for purposes of 
study. * * * An intelligent or rightly bred youth 
or girl ought to enjoy much even in Plato by the 
time they are fifteen or sixteen.”— Ruskin. 

“As concerns the quantity of what is to be read 
there is a single rule: Read much, but not many 
works, multum , non mult a S—Sir W. Hamilton . 

“ I do affirm that a most miserable distrac¬ 
tion of choice must be very generally incident 
to the times. * * * One of the chief symp¬ 
toms is an enormous ‘ gluttonism * of books.”— 
De Quincey. 


Literature of Time . 


53 


Every man of education should have a true 
taste in literature; this can be acquired in the 
society of the solid, pure and elevated writers of 
the past and present. Lady Jane Grey found 
more pleasure in reading Plato in the original 
Greek than she did in the hunting parties of the 
court. 

The following authors are suggested. They 
comprise several models for study and sufficient 
elements for the formation of taste. When the 
taste and style are formed, and the judgment 
matured, other works may be read with profit. 

REFLECTIVE AND CRITICAL. 

Newman. Idea of a University. Historical 

Sketches. 

RUSKIN. Modem Painters. Architecture 

and Painting. Stones of Ven¬ 
ice. “ What to Read,” in 
Appendix to Perspective and 
Drawing. Frondes Agrestes. 


154 

Something to Read. 

Macaulay. 

Fors Clavigera. Seven Lamps 

of Architecture. Crown of 

Wild Olive. Queen of the 

Air. Ethics of the Dust. Ses¬ 
ame and Lilies. 

Essays on Milton, Addison, Dry- 
den, Cowley, Byron, History, 

Athenian Orders. 

Helps. 

Friends in Council. Organiza¬ 
tion in Daily Life. 

Holmes. 

Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

The Professor. The Poet. 

Bacon. 

Essays. 

Lamb. 

Essays of Elia. 

Reed. 

British Poets. 

Coleridge. 

Notes on Shakespeare. 

Hazlitt. 

Essays. Elizabethan Literature. 

De Quincey. 
Johnson. 

Essays. 

Essays. Preface to the “ Life of 
Shakespeare.” Preface to “ Dic¬ 
tionary.” 


Literature of Time. 


155 


Bryant. 


Preface to “ Library of Poetry 
and Song.” 


Burke. 

Irving. 


Sketch Book. Alhambra. Tales 
of a Traveller. Knickerbocker. 
Conquest of Granada. Brace- 
bridge Hall. Wolfert’s Roost. 


Essays. 


Lowell. 


Among My Books. 


Addison. * Papers. 

STUDIES FOR PROSE STYLE. 

Newman, Ruskin, Helps, Addison, Macaulay, 
Burke, Wiseman, Manning, De Quincey, Irving. 

“ It is nearly an axiom that people will not be 
better than the books they read.”— D. Potter. 


ELOQUENCE. 


Chatham, Pitt, Fox, Burke, etc. Read all in 
“ British Eloquence,” by Goodrich, O’Connell, 
Curran, etc. Speeches—Webster, Clay, Calhoun, 


156 


Something to Read, 


etc. ; Newman, Manning, Wiseman, Bossuet, 
Bourdaloue, Lacordaire ; Saints Chrysostom, 
Gregory, Basil; Demosthenes, .Eschines, Cicero. 


TRANSLATIONS. 


Homer. 

Virgil. 

Plato. 

Horace. 

Dante. 

/Eschylus. 

Sophocles. 

Demosthenes. 

Herodotus. 


Bryant’s. 

Conington’s. 

Jowett’s. 

Bulwer-Lytton’s. 

Longfellow’s. 

Browning’s. 

Plumptre’s. 

Brougham’s. 

Rawlinson’s. 


STUDIES FOR TASTE IN POETRY. 


Shakespeare. 

Scott. 

Wordsworth. 


Bryant. 
Longfellow. 
Aubrey De Vere. 


Literature of Time. 


157 


VERSIFICATION. 

Shakespeare. Gray. 

Tennyson. Pope. 

COLLECTIONS OF FAVORITE POEMS. 


Bryant. 

Library of Poetry and Song. 

Palgrave. 

Golden Treasury of English Lyr¬ 
ics. 

Underwood. 

English Literature. 

Day. 

English Literature. 

Chambers. 

Encyclopaedia of English Litera¬ 
ture ; valuable for older and 

Hales. 

less well-known poetry. 

Longer English Poems. 

Bartlett. 

F'amiliar Quotations. 

Mackay. 

One Thousand and One Gems. 

Longfellow. 

Poets and Poetry of Europe— 
German, Italian, Spanish, etc. 


These collections hold a high rank, and in them 


58 


Something to Read. 


one may find all that is needed for purposes of 
study. 

Every student of English literature should have, 
at least, one for reference, as they contain nearly 
all the choice poems of every age. 

Of the following poets something should be 
known : 


Chaucer. 

Hemans. 

Spenser. 

Holmes. 

Sidney. 

Herbert. 

Elizabeth Browning. 

Herrick. 

Robert Browning. 

Hood. 

Campbell. 

Bret Harte. 

Collins. 

Jean Ingelow. 

Cowley. 

Leigh Hunt. 

Burns. 

Landor. 

Butler. 

Lowell. 

Beattie. 

Macaulay. 

Baillie. 

Massey. 

Bryant. 

W. Morris. 

Buchanan. 

Akenside. 


Literature of Time . 


159 


Canning. 

Carey. 

Crabbe. 

Davis. 

Drummond. 

Thomson. 


Procter. 

Reed. 

Rogers. 

Thackeray. 

White. 

Willis. 

Whittier. 


BIOGRAPHY. 


“ Few things so inspire us with the desire of 
greatness as the reading of the lives of great 
men. Why should not we do great deeds like 
those which other men have done—be they deeds 
of heroes, saints or sages?” 


Alexander the Great. 
Alfred the Great. 
Alexander. 

Anthony. 

J. Q. Adams. 

Bayard. 

Basil. 


Williams. 

Abbott. 

Plutarch. 

Dowden. 

F. T. Morse, Jr. 

Berville. 

Newman. 


i6o 


Something to Read. 


Bonaparte. 

Scott. 

Burke. 

Prior. 

Calhoun. 

Van Hoist. 

Charles V. 

Stirling. 

Clay. 

Prentiss. 

Cowper. 

Southey. 

Columbus. 

Irving. 

Cicero. 

Middleton. 

Cyrus. 

Plutarch. 

De Foe. 

Minto. 

Emmet. 

F. Burke. 

Charles J. Fox. 

Russell. 

Franklin. 

Weld. 

Ferdinand and Isabella. 

Prescott. 

Francis I. 

Pardoe. 

Frederick the Great. 

Campbell. 

Frederick II. 

Lord Doree. 

Gregory. 

Newman. 

Gallitzin. 

Hayden. 

Patrick Henry. 

Wirt. 

Hannibal. 

Abbott. 


Literature of Time. 


161 


Henry IV. France. 
Irving. 

Johnson. 

Thomas Jefferson. 
Paul Jones. 

Lives of the Poets. 
Leo X. 

Charles Lamb. 
General Lee. 
Livingstone. 

Louis XVII. 

Louis XIX. 
Lorenzo de Medici. 
Michael Angelo. 
Milton. 

Men of Letters. 
Mozart. 

Nelson. 

Peter the Great. 
O’Connell. 

Plutarch. 

ii 


James. 

C. D. Warner. 
Boswell. 

F. T. Morse, Jr. 

Mackenzie. 

Johnson. 

Roscoe. 

Talfourd. 

McCabe. 

Sedgwick. 

Bentiiam. 

Pardoe. 

Roscoe. 

Simmon. 

Pattison. 

Morley. 

Holmes. 

Southey. 

Paron. 

McGee. 

Campbell. 


Something to Read. 


162 


Philip. 

Plutarch. 

Richard Coeur de Lion. 

James. 

Scott. 

Lockhart. 

Sheridan. 

Moore. 

St. Louis. 

Joinville. 

Wolsey. 

Cavendish. 

Webster. 

J. C. Lodge. 

Washington. 

Irving. 

Ximenes. 

Hefele. 


Some are stars—some are beacons. 

There are other lives as noble, others still 
higher, whose every deed seems to write the 
words— 

Lives of great men all remind us 
We can make our lives sublime. 

POETRY. 

Shakespeare. Hamlet. Macbeth. Lear. 

Julius Caesar. Kings. Mer¬ 
chant of Venice. As You 
Like It. 


Literature of Time . 


163 


Milton. 

Dryden. 

Pope. 


Goldsmith. 

Gray. 

Wordsworth. 


Scott. 


Tennyson. 

Longfellow. 

Bryant. 

Southwell. 

Babbington. 

Crashaw. 


Paradise Lost. L’Allegro. II 
Penseroso. 

Hind and Panther. 

Essay on Criticism. Essay 
on Man. Rape of the 
Lock. 

Deserted Village. Traveller. 

Elegy. 

Ode on Immortality. Short 
Poems. Parts of “ The 
Excursion.” 

Lay of the Last Minstrel. 
Lady of the Lake. Mar- 
mion. 

Short Poems. In Memori- 
am. 

Evangeline. Poems. 

Short Poems. Thanatopsis. 

Poetical Works. 

Poetical Works. 

Poetical Works. 


64 


Something to Read. 


COWPER. The Task. A Mother’s Pic¬ 


ture. 


Ryan. 

Aubrey de Vere. 
Keats. 

Young. 

Coleridge. 

Newman. 

Poe. 

Kirke White. 


Poems. 

May Carols. Sonnets. 
Nightingale. Grecian Urn. 
Night Thoughts. 

Ancient Mariner. 

Poems. 

The Raven. The Bells. 
Poems. 


DIDACTIC OR REFERENCE. 


Abbott. 


Gould. 

Alford. 

Moon. 

Gilmore. 

Mathews. 

Trench. 


English Lessons for English 
People. How to Write 
Clearly. 

Good English. 

The “ Queen’s English.”) Read 
The “ Dean’s English.” \ both - 
Art of Expression. 

Words, their Use and Abuse. 
Study of Words. 


Literature of Time. 165 


Porter. 

Books and Reading. 

Schlegel, F. 

History of Literature. 

SCHLEGEL, A. 

Dramatic Literature. 

Pycroft. 

Course of English Reading. 

Carpenter. 

Handbook of Poetry. 

Kames. 

Elements of Criticism. 

Spencer. 

Philosophy of Style. 

Campbell. 

Philosophy of Rhetoric. 

Bain. 

Rhetoric. 

Whately. 

Rhetoric. 

Genung. 

Rhetoric. 

Craik. 

English Literature. 

Azarias. 

Philosophy of Literature. 

Allibone. 

Dictionary of English Authors. 

Ward. 

British Poets. 

Morley. 

English Men of Letters. 

Minto. 

English Literature. 

Blackwood. 

Series of the Classics. Ancient 

Classics for English Readers. 

Ticknor. 

Spanish Literature. 


66 


Something to Read. 


HISTORY. 


There are three ways of going about the study 
of History : 

1. Find out what are the great men or events 
that have interest for you and get an accurate 
knowledge of each of them. Be able to say, 
“ This fact of history, at least, I have thoroughly 
mastered.” Take one at a time. 

2. Make a short course, in the chronological 
order, of the different nations and of certain 
periods. For instance, learn well an outline of 
the history of England, let us say “ Burke’s 
Lingard.” When this outline is well set in the 
mind, fill up the spaces. Read : 


Lingard. 

Guizot. 

Bancroft. 

Alison. 

Hallam. 

Grote. 


England. 

France. 

United States. 
Europe. 

Middle Ages. 
Greece. 


Literature of Time. 


167 

Merivale. Rome. 

BOSSUET. Universal History. 

RAWLINSON. The Seven Ancient Monarchies. 

History 6f Egypt. 

Goodyear. Ancient and Modern History. 

Then plan a course according to your need. 

Gibbon, Hume and Froude, though good writ¬ 
ers, are untrustworthy historians. 

3. The third method is to study up a certain 
period, comparing the views of different historians. 
This is the most thorough way, but the attention 
and care required in the minuteness of detail 
might weary some beginners in history. 

For young men who have not yet become inter¬ 
ested in history, and who have only fragments 
of time, the first method is the best. The second is 
excellent, and for some minds better than the first. 

FICTION. 

All are supposed to have read, almost before 
leaving the nursery, Robinson Crusoe, Don 


Something to Read . 


168 


Quixote, Mother Goose’s Melodies; yEsop’s.Fene- 
lon’s, and Gray’s Fables ; the heroes of mythol¬ 
ogy, Tales of Hendrick Conscience, etc. 

Let those who must read novels keep to the 
more correct, classical, healthy-toned writers: 
Scott, Thackeray, Dickens. 

Some have become absolute slaves of novel 
reading. It is not necessarily harmful to read a 
good novel occasionally, one that is pure in tone, 
right-minded in principle and religion and written 
in a correct style. No honest man would care to 
read any other. 

But much novel reading begets passive reading, 
and passive reading weakens the energy of the 
mind. “ It is a process which wastes time, and, 
what is worse, wastes the intellect, the fancy and 
the living soul.”— Porter. 


MISCELLANEOUS. 


Johnson. 

Southey. 


Rasselas. 

Life of Nelson. 


Literature of Time. 


69 


Goldsmith. 

Izaak Walton. 
Junius. 

Gray. 

Cowper. 

Lamb. 

De Sevigne. 

Miss Mitford. 

T. Hughes. 

Francis Finn, S. J. 

Kenelm Digby. 
Kinglake. 

C. Kingsley. 
Newman. 

Alcott. 

Warren. 

Warner. 


Vicar of Wakefield. 

The Angler. 

Letters. 

Letters. 

Letters. 

Letters. 

Letters. 

Our Village. 

Tom Brown at Rugby, 
Oxford. 

Percy Wynn. Tom Play¬ 
fair. Harry Dee. 
Broadstone of Honor. 
Eothen. 

The Heroes. 

Loss and Gain. 

Little Women. 

The Diary of a Late 
Physician. 

Backlog Studies. My 
Summer in a Garden. 


170 


Something to Read. 


Dr. J. Brown. 

De La Motte Fouque. 
Farrar. 


Spare Hours. 

Undine. 

St. Winifred’s. Julian 


Home. 


Hawthorne. 
C. S. Lilly. 


Characteristics of New¬ 
man. Characteristics 
of Manning. 


Also the Dublin Review, Edinburgh Review, 
Blackwood's Magazine, Litt ell's Living Age, 
Chambers Miscellany. 


HINTS TO MAKE READING FRUITFUL. 


1. Read with attention. Burke read as if he were 
never to see the book a second time. Guard 
against careless reading. Better read one history, 
one poem, one essay well, if it take a year, than 
lazily to fritter away twelve hours in a process 
that blunts the sharp activity of the mind and 
weakens its power of seizing on a difficult subject. 

2. Read what it interests you to know. In what 


Literature of Time. 


171 


does your ignorance disturb you most ? With 
what events, men, principles, would you like to 
be conversant ? Make sure of this. 

3. Read what bears directly or indirectly on 
your profession, business, position in life. Pro¬ 
pose to yourself a definite purpose. Why am I 
reading this book? Why am I reading it now? 
The habit of asking ourselves these questions will 
involve the calling of ourselves to account for our 
reading and the considering of it in the light of 
wisdom and duty. 

Every self-educated man, from Franklin onward, 
was not only earnest, but select in his reading. 

4. Have some definite, solid reading always in 
hand; don’t be merely a literary butterfly. 

5. Read with method. Make special efforts to 
retain what is gathered from reading. Make al¬ 
ways a mental synopsis of the essay, article or 
book read, and often a written one. 

What was proposed in that article? Was it 
descriptive or argumentative ? If the latter, what 


172 


Something to Read. 


did the author wish to prove? Did he prove it 
satisfactorily? What were the chief arguments? 
Did the subject and manner of arranging the 
reasoning please me? Was the style pleasing? 
What special thoughts or saying ought to be sown 
on my memory? 

Use the pen for brief or full notes. 

“Above all, never omit a reference, and keep 
such notes in order, and where you will be able to 
find them. Besides the intrinsic value of what is 
written, note-taking is a means to the end of 
quickening the intellectual energies, of arousing 
and holding the attention.”— N. Porter. 


Literature of Time. 


173 


GRADED COURSES OF READING. 

One who carefully and gradually follows these 
readings will have obtained, by the end of the 
course, a fair knowledge of English literature. 

SEVENTH COURSE—PHILOSOPHICAL. 


CLASS READING. 
Jouin’s Logic. 

Jouin’s Metaphysics. 

Dr. Ward’s Philosophy of 
Theism. 

Duke of Argyle’s Works. 
Janet’s Final Causes. 

Russo’s Philosophy. 

Stormhurst Series of English 
Philosophy, Logic, First Prin¬ 
ciples of Knowledge. Psy¬ 
chology, Natural Theology, 
-+ 

Moral Philosophy. 

LITERATURE OF TIME. 
Apologia, Newman. 

Manning’s Miscellanies. 


Brownson’s Essays. 

Formation of Christendom. 
Endowments of Man. 

Soirees of St. Petersburg. 

Dublin Review. 

Catholic Quarterly. 

History of Europe. 

LITERA TURE OF ETERNITY. 
The Sacred Scriptures. 

Faith of Our Fathers. 

Life of St. Ignatius. 

Life of St. Thomas, Vaughan. 
Inner Life of Lacordaire. 

Tactics of Infidels. 

True Men as We Need Them. 
Devout Life. 


174 


Something to Read. 


SIXTH COURSE—RHETORICAL. 


CLASS READING. 

Pitt, Burke, Fox. 

Bossuet, Bourdaloue, Lacordaire. 
Basil, Chrysostom, Gregory. 
Demosthenes, Cicero. 

Bain’s Rhetoric. 

Whateley’s Rhetoric. 

Campbell’s Philosophy of Rhet¬ 
oric. 

Spencer’s Philosophy of Style. 
Hamlet, Julius Caesar. 

LITERATURE OF TIME. 


Roscoe, Lorenzo de Medici. 


Oratory and Orators. 

Landor’s Imaginary Conversa¬ 
tions. 

Schlegel’s History of Dramatic 
Literature. 

History of England. The Month. 

LITER A TURE OF ETERNITY. 
Life of Christ. 

Life of St. F. Xavier. 

Life of F. de Ravignan. 

Religion and Science. 

Life of St. Philip. 

Life of St. Charles Borromeo. 

of St. Elizabeth of Hun¬ 
gary. 

Lectures of a Certain Professor. 
Notes on Ingersoll, Lambert. 


Curran, Clay, Grattan. 

Webster, Calhoun, Fr. T. Burke. Life 
Wendell Phillips. 

Newman, Wiseman. 


Literature of Time. 


175 


FIFTH COURSE—POETICAL. 


CLASS READING. 

De Quincey. 

Minto’s English Literature. 
Morley’s English Literature. 
Queen’s English. 

Macbeth, King Lear. 

Samson Agonistes. 

Goethe. 

Spenser—Selections. 

Chaucer—Selections. 

LITERATURE OF TIME. 
Dante, Milton. 

Tennyson—In Memoriam. 
Macaulay’s Essays. 

Letters of Junius. 

Lessing’s Laocoon. 

Mrs. Browning. 

Coleridge—Ancient Mariner. 


Holmes—Autocrat, Poet. 

Littell's Living Age. 

Life of Ozanam. 

Schlegel’s History of Literature. 
History of France, Martin. 

LITERA TURE OF ETERNITY. 
St. Aloysius. 

St. Francis de Sales. 

Life of St. Anselm. 

Church of the Fathers, New¬ 
man. 

God Our Father. 

Life of St. Thomas a Becket. 
Cardinal Ximenes. 

May Papers. 

Growth in Holiness. 

Catholic Belief. 

Life of St. Alphonsus. 


176 


Something to Read . 


FOURTH COURSE—CLASSICAL. 


CLASS READING. 
Addison’s Essays. 

Lamb’s Essays. 

Pope’s Essay on Criticism. 
Bryant’s Poems. 

Scott’s Poems. 

Gould’s Good English. 

Karnes’s Elements of Criticism. 
Richard III. 

Merchant of Venice. 

Aubrey de Vere. 

LITERATURE OF TIME. 
Callista, Newman. 

Mahaffy’s Greek Life. 

Friends in Council, Helps. 
Brown’s Spare Hours. 
Johnson’s Rasselas. 

Ivanlioe. 


Pride and Prejudice, Austen. 
David Copperfield. 

Getting On in the World, Mat 
thews. 

Catholic World. 

History of Germany. 

LITERATURE OF ETERNITY. 
Life of St. Stanislaus. 

All for Jesus. 

Life of the Cure D’Ars. 

Life of Blessed Margaret Mary. 
The Christian Virtues. 
Lacordaire’s Letters. 

Life of St. Bernard. 

Eucharist, Gerbet. 

History of the Mass, O’Brien. 

St. Matthew’s Gospel. 

Imitation of Christ. 


Literature of Time . 


177 


THIRD COURSE—PROGRESSIVE. 


CLASS READING. 

Irving. 

Longfellow. 

Cowper. 

Pope’s Essay on Man. 

How to Write Clearly. 

Bacon. 

Hazlitt’s Essays. 

LITERATURE OF TIME. 
Willis, Julian Home, Farrar. 
Little Men, Alcott. 

Little Women, Alcott. 

Last of the Mohicans. 

Jesuits in North America, Park- 
man. 


Life of Caesar, Liddle. 

Pickwick Papers. 

Among My Books. 

History of Greece. 

LITERATURE OF ETERNITY. 
Our Lady of Lourdes, Lasserre. 
Life of Mrs. Seton. 

Life of B. John Berchmans. 
Fabiola. 

Happiness of Heaven. 

Sacred Heart, Dalgairns. 

Life of St. Vincent de Paul. 

Life of Bonaventure. 

Life of Blessed Thomas More. 


12 


178 


Something to Read . 


SECOND COURSE—GRADUAL. 


CLASS READING. 
Gray’s Elegy. 

Goldsmith’s Traveller. 
Hawthorne. 

Civil War. 

Longfellow—Hiawatha. 

Burns—Ode To a Mountain 
Daisy. 

Cowper—Lines on My Moth¬ 
er’s Picture. 

LITERA TURE OF TIME. 
The Greek Heroes, Kingsley. 
The Vicar of Wakefield. 

Life of Defoe. 

Plague of London, Defoe. 
Helps—Life of Las Casas. 


Irving’s Columbus. 

Discovery of the Great West. 
Walton’s Angler. 

Life of Alfred the Great. 

History of Roman Empire, Meri 
vale. 

LITERATURE OF ETERNITY. 
Western Missionaries. 

Early Martyrs. 

Short Sermons at Oscott. 

Holy Communion, Dalgaims. 
Life of Alexis Clerc. 

Life of Blessed Petei Canisius. 
Life of St. Francis of Assisi. 
Messenger of the Sacred Heart. 


Literature of Time. 


179 


FIRST COURSE—ELEMENTARY. 


CLASS READING. 
Deserted Village. 

Poe’s Raven. 

Irving—Rip Van Winkle. 
Tennyson—Passing of Arthur. 
Lamb’s Stories from Shake¬ 
speare. 

Life of Washington. 

Green’s Short History of Eng¬ 
land. 

LITERATURE OF TIME. 
Irving’s Goldsmith. 

Robinson Crusoe. The Dog 
Crusoe. 

Little Lord Fauntleroy. 

Tom Brown at Rugby. 


Stories of the Angels, Faber. 
Swiss Family Robinson. 

The Boy’s King Arthur. 

The Boy’s Froissart. 

Stories from Homer and Virgil. 
United States History. 

LITERATURE OF ETERNITY. 
Memoir of a Guardian Angel. 
Memorials of the Blessed. 

Dom Bosco. 

Life of Father Jogues. 

Martyrs of the Coliseum. 

Golden Sands. 

Patron Saints. 

Life of St. Stanislaus. 




a. fw. ej. a?. 


PART II. 

LITERATURE OF ETERNITY. 

HAT doth it profit a man if he gain the 



whole world and lose his own soul?” 


We take pains to learn of the lives of the heroes 
of this world and of time. Shall we care nothing 
for the heroes of Heaven and eternity ? Some of 
the sweetest recollections of childhood cluster 
around the impressions made by a good book that 
was read, perhaps, by accident. There seems to 
hang around it a peace that is brought by the 
memory of no other reading. Is not this a reward 
for the sacrifice sometimes required, and for the 
interest taken in what more nearly concerns God ? 


182 


Something to Read. 


“O how good and sweet is Thy Spirit, O Lord, 
in all things. And I will receive you ; and I will 
be a Father to you ; and you shall be my sons 
and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.”— Wis¬ 
dom xii. i. 


DEVOTIONAL. 

“ How lovely are Thy tabernacles, O Lord of 
hosts; my soul longeth and famisheth for the 
Courts of the Lord.” 


St. F. de Sales. 
Boudreaux, S. J. 

F. W. Faber. 


Scaramelli, S. J. 


Devout Life. Love of God. 

Happiness of Heaven. God 
our Father. 

Spiritual Conference. All for 
Jesus. Bethlehem. The 
Precious Blood. Growth in 
Holiness. The Foot of the 
Cross. Creator and Creat¬ 
ure. 

Guide to the Spiritual Life. 


Literature of Eternity. 183 

Luis de la Palma, S. J. History of the Sacred 

Passion. 


Abbe Grou. 

Jesus and Mary. 

Jeanjacquet, S. J. 

Abbe Gay. 

Most Holy Virgin. 

The Christian Virtues. 

Dalgairns. 

The Sacred Heart. The 

Franco, S. J. 

Holy Communion. 

Devotion to the Sacred 

Heart. 

De Bussy. 

Month of Mary. 

Month of St. Joseph. 

Mumford. 

Prayers for the Dead. 

Manning. 

Glories of the Sacred 

Heart. The Eternal 

Priesthood. 

Flowers of Francis Assisi. 

Lallemant. 

Doctrine of the Spiritual 

Life. 

Rodriguez. 

Christian Perfection. 

Nieremberg. 

Temporal and Eternal. 

McLeod. 

Jesus the All Beautiful. 




8 4 


Something to Read. 


“The Kingdom of God is within you. If any 
man love me he will keep my word, and my 
Father will love him, and we will come to him 
and make our abode with him .”—Luke xvii. 21 ; 
John viv. 23. 

BIOGRAPHICAL. 


“One thing I have asked of the Lord, this will I 
seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the 
Lord all the days of my life.”— Ps. xxvi. 4. 

“He asked life of thee; and thou hast given 
him length of days for ever and ever.”— Ps. xx. 5. 


Coleridge, S. J. 


Healy Thompson. 


Goldie, S. J. 

Monnin. 

Manning. 


Public Life of Our Lord. 
Life of Our Life. Life of 
St. F. Xavier. 

Life of St. Aloysius. Life 
of St. Stanislaus. Life of 
St. Charles Borromeo. 

Life of B. John Berchmans. 
Life of the Cure of Ars. 

Life of St. Theresa. 


Literature of Eternity. 


85 


Lady Fullerton. 
De Ligny. 
Ponlevoy. 
Butler. 


De Vere. 
Tickell, S. J. 
Genelli, S. J. 
Hefele. 
Craven, Mrs. 


O’Reilly, D. J. 


O’Meara. 

Brownson. 


Life of St. Agnes. 

Life of St. Frances of Rome. 
Life of Christ. 

F. de Ravignan. 

Lives of the Saints. 

Life of St. F. de Sales. 

Life of St. John of God. 

Life of St. Catherine of 
Genoa. 

Heroines of Charity. 

B. Margaret Mary. 

St. Ignatius. 

Cardinal Ximenes. 

A Sister’s Story. 
Maidens of Hallowed 
Names. 

Martyrs of the Coliseum. 
Jerome and his Correspond¬ 
ents. 

Life of Frederick Ozanam. 
Life of Prince Gallitzin. 








Something to Read. 


186 

“ The sufferings of this time are not worthy to 
be compared with the glory to come, that shall 
be revealed in us.”— Rom. vii. 18. 

We should not deceive ourselves into believing 
that we have no obligation of learning about God 
and His saints. We shall be called to account 
for good left undone. 

“ These things I write to you that you may 
know you have eternal life, you who believe in 
the Son of God.”— : John , Ep. i. vi. 13. 

“ Blessed is that servant whom when his Lord 
cometh he shall find watching. Amen I say to 
you, he will place him over all his goods .”—Luke 
xii. 43> 44- 


HISTORICAL. 

“ Wisdom is better than strength, and a wise 
man is better than a strong man.” “ Give me 
wisdom, that sitteth by Thy throne, and cast 
me not off from among Thy children .”—Wisdom 
xi. 1, 4. 


Literature of Eternity. 187 


Allies. 

Formation of Christendom. 

Alzogs. 

History of the Church. 

Digby. 

Ages of Faith. 

Spalding. 

History of the Reformation. 

Montalembert. 

Monks of the West. 

Maitland. 

Dark Ages. 

Wiseman. 

Science and Revealed Reli¬ 


gion. 

Newman. 

Points of History. 

Kenrick. 

Primacy of the Apostolic See. 


For the rest, brethren, rejoice, be perfect, take 
exhortation, be of one mind, have peace, and 
the God of peace and love shall be with you. 

“ To him that overcometh, I will give to eat 
of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of 
God.”— Apoc. ii. 7. 


i88 


Something to Read. 


CONTROVERSIAL—INSTRUCTIVE. 

“ Give yc glory to the Lord your God, before 
it be dark; and before your feet stumble upon 
the dark mountains ; you shall look for light, 
and he will turn it into the shadow of death and 
into darkness .”—Jeremias xiii. 17. 


De Maistre. 
Humphreys, S. J. 
Balmes. 

Brownson. 

Manning. 


Stone. 

Spalding. 

Audin. 


Soirees of St. Petersburg. 
Other Gospels. 

Protestantism and Catholic¬ 
ity. 

Liberalism in the Church. 
The Convert. 

Four Great Evils of the Day. 
Temporal Power of the 
Pope. 

The Invitation Heeded. 
History of the Protestant 
Reformation. 

Life of Luther. 



Literature of Eternity . 189 


Harper, S. J. 

Metaphysics of the School. 

Drane. 

Christian Schools and Schol¬ 


ars. 

Muller, F. 

The Blessed Eucharist. 

O’Brien. 

The Mass. 

Oakley. 

The Mass. 

Newman. 

Apologia. Loss and Gain. 

Thebaud, S. J. 

Gentilism. 

Ronayne, S. J. 

Religion and Science. 

Mir, S. J. 

Harmony between Science 


and Religion. 

Lambert. 

Notes on Ingersoll. Cathoiic 


Belief. 

Gibbons. 

Faith of our Fathers. 


True Faith of our Fore¬ 
fathers. 


“And Jesus saith to him: Follow me. And 
he rose up and followed him.”— Matt. ix. 9. 

“You brethren, therefore, knowing these things 
before, take heed lest being led aside by the error 



Something to Read. 


190 

of the unwise you fall from your own steadfast¬ 
ness. I am the way, the truth and the life.”— 
John xix. 6. 

Many earnest people know of other books. 
These few are proposed to those who have not 
yet realized the importance of raising their 
thoughts to God. Amid the many hours of the 
day given to friends, to wealth, to pleasure and 
to learning, where is the heart so hopelessly self¬ 
ish as to refuse to give back a few moments to 
the Almighty Giver of all these good things ? 

“The children of the world are wiser in their 
generation than the children of light.”— Lzike 
xvi. 8. 


MISCELLANEOUS. 

American Catholic Quarterly. 
Catholic World. 

The Month . 

The Dublin Review. 

Messenger of the Sacred Heart. 


Literature of Eternity. 191 

Ave Maria. 

Irish Monthly. 

THE IMITATION OF CHRIST. 

“O Father of Mercies and God of all comfort.*’ 
—2 Cor. i. 3. 

“ O how great is the multitude of Thy sweet¬ 
ness, O Lord, which Thou hast hidden for them 
that fear Thee, which Thou hast wrought for them 
that hope in Thee in the sight of the sons of 
men.”— Ps. xxx. 20. 

One who wishes to love God more, and to put 
himself on a fair way to save his soul, should read 
every day two numbers of the “Imitation.” It is 
only a few lines and takes but a few minutes—but 
those lines will be “written in heaven.” How 
many troubled souls have found comfort in that 
book, which, whenever opened, seems to suit our 
needs. Well has it been named “ the communion 
of the devout soul with the loving and devout 
Redeemer.” A most perfect preparation for 


192 


Something to Read. 


Holy Communion is a reflection on a chapter 
of the Fourth Book. St. Ignatius had two books 
which he loved, the New Testament and the 
“ Imitation.” From these two sources he drew 
the Spiritual Exercises that have saved so many 
souls for centuries and are now the guiding 
lights of spiritual life. 

THE NEW TESTAMENT. 

“Come to me, all ye who labor and are bur¬ 
dened, and I will refresh you.”— Matt. ix. 28. 

“ Neither is there any other nation so great,, 
that hath God so nigh them as our God is 
present to all petitions.”— Deut . iv. 7. 

The most precious of all books is the New 
Testament, where we learn of Him who has done 
so much for us. The gospels are a touching 
record of the mercy, the love, the miracles, the 
intimacy of God made man, and of His deal¬ 
ings with those He loved. How can we be so 
eager to learn so much about what must pass 


Literature of Eternity . 193 

away with this life, and yet be so careless, so 
indifferent, about knowing the teaching and 
actions of Him with whom we hope to live for 
eternity? We do not realize that we shall live 
with God. “ The world shall pass away, but Thy 
word shall never pass away.” We have not here 
a lasting habitation. In the gospels we read His 
own blessed words as He spoke them, and the 
history of His life. In the Acts of the Apostles 
the inspired writer tells us the history of the 
Early Church, after our Lord had left it, and 
what His followers did to honor their Blessed 
Master. In the Apocalypse we see a picture of 
our future home, and in the Epistles we learn 
the sublime teaching of St. Paul preaching faith, 
St. Peter giving lessons of hope, and St. John 
of charity. Shall it be true of us, as time goes 
on, that the world and we grow colder and forget 
more and more the divine Saviour who came to 
save and love us and gain our love? 

“ I write unto you young men, because you 
13 


194 


Something to Read. 


are strong, and the word of God abideth in you, 
and you have overcome the wicked one.”— John, 
Ep. i. i. 14. 

“Look up to heaven, do not change it for the 
earth ; look up to Jesus Christ, do not renounce 
Him for the world. Look up to eternity, do not 
lose it for a moment of time.”— F. de Ravignan 

“And they shall see His face; and His name 
shall be on their foreheads. And the night shall 
be no more; and they shall not need the light of 
the lamp, nor the light of the sun, because the 
Lord God shall enlighten them, and they shall 
reign for ever and ever.”— Apoc. xxii. 4, 5. 


a. m. 0. 



READING AND THE MIND. 

(Revised Fifth Edition.) 

WITH. 

SOMETHING TO READ. 

(Tenth Thousand.) 

By Rev. J. F. X. O’CONOR, S.J. 


“This work, as the title indicates, contains two parts. The latter of these 
is a revised and enlarged edition of an admirable paper prepared by the author 
for the members of his class, when he was Professor of Poeiry in Georgetown 
College a few years ago. As an elenchus of those works in their native lan¬ 
guage, an acquaintance with which is exacted from all English men of letters, 
it fully deserves the commendation given it in these columns at the time of its 
publication, and which the author has done us the honor to prefix as an intro¬ 
duction to his enlarged book. It is a scholarly essay on the subject of reading 
and its influence on the mind. At once philosophical, didactic and critical, 
Fr. O’Conor’s work is admirably calculated to awaken intelligent interest in 
the mind of the young aspirant after knowledge, by showing him the advantages 
to be drawn from judicious reading, while it gives him good guidance in dis¬ 
covering where such judicious reading may be had by placing in his hands for 
use those canons of criticism which can surely thread for him his otherwise 
uncertain way through the maze of our too prolific literature .”—Georgetown 
Journal. 

“This is a little book which a large class of young men will find very useful. 
Rev. J. F. X. O’Conor aims at answering, in a series of short essays, the ques¬ 
tion so often asked with earnest intention, ‘ What shall I read?’ In short, he 
undertakes to map out a course of reading which would at least start the young 
explorer intelligently on his way into the mighty world of literature. Set 
courses of reading are, as a rule, to be mistrusted by students who have the 
benefit of competent personal advice, for what is good for one to read may 
often be only a waste and vexation of spirit for another. But Fr. O’Conor 
does not forget this fact; and at a time when it is a work that is produced 
from day to day by half educated men, a flash chronicle of small beer and 
old wives’ gossip; when it is that prodigious weed of the literary garden, the 
cheap newspaper, that absorbs the reading time of the people, men and women, 
boys and girls, every book is a blessing that can help against the influence of 
the deadly intellectual drug. Fr. O’Conor’s essays show a nice critical feeling 
and a wise discrimination as to the end he has in view. * * *”—Catholic 

World. 


Favorably reviewed by the Boston Pilot, Republic, Stylus , N. Y. Xavier, etc. 



READING AND THE MIND, WITH SOMETHING 
TO READ. 

Revised Fifth Edition. By J. F. X. O’Conor, S. J. One of 
the best books on reading ever published. Solid, clear, and 
suggestive. Invaluable classical guide for colleges and con¬ 
vents. The pioneer of many imitations. Benziger Bros. 
$1.00. 

CYLINDER OF NEBUCHADNEZZAR. 

Translation of the Babylonian Cuneiform. First publication of 
the kind in America. 

“The collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art includes a very im¬ 
portant terra-cotta cylinder of Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, which has- 
been copied and translated by Fr. J. F. X. O’Conor, of Woodstock, Mary¬ 
land. This particular cylinder is of interest * * * from its being as far as 
known the first unpublished original that has found its way from that ancient 
empire of Babylon to the city of New York, there to tell its story of the work 
of the mighty king and confirm anew the facts made known by the other 
inscriptions of this same monarch.”— H. Y. Herald. 

Woodstock College, 1885. $1.00. 

PRACTICE OF HUMILITY. 

Second Edition. From the Italian of Pope Leo XIII. Benziger 
Bros., N. Y., 1890. Maroquette, 20c ; plain, 10c. 

GARUCCLS CHRISTIAN ART. 

A monograph. Cunningham. Philadelphia, 1885. 

LYRIC AND DRAMATIC POETRY. 

By the Students of Boston College. Poetry class, 1883. McQueeney,. 
Boston, 1883. 

PEARLS OF A YEAR. 

By the Students of St. Francis Xavier’s College. P. Kenedy,. 
N. Y., 1889. $1.00. 

THREE HOLY LIVES. 

St. John Berchmans, St. Peter Claver, St. Alphonsus Rodriguez, 
N. Y., 1888. St. Francis Xavier’s College. 

ST. ALOYSIUS GONZAGA. 

1892. N. Y. St. Francis Xavier’s College. $1.00. 





















































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